


A Voice in the Wilderness

by Lulzy (likelolwhat)



Series: Fire in the Sky (Main Canon) [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Background Relationships, Canon-Typical Violence, Dragonborn Support Group, Ensemble Cast, Gen, Idioms Ahoy, Love Triangles, Mercenaries, No Romance, Open Relationships, Pansexual Character, Redguard Dragonborn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-10 02:05:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 49,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1153474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likelolwhat/pseuds/Lulzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something funny happened on the way to the chopping block...</p><p> </p><p>Zahra is miles away when Helgen is destroyed. She never thought the dragon who saved her friends from certain death had anything to do with her, personally. She never thought she would be anything more than just another mercenary, trying to eke out a living in the frozen land of Skyrim while not trampling too much on her conscience.</p><p>For mercenaries, heroism isn't part of the job - it's doing someone else's dirty work. And Zahra was fine with that. But though politics and glory were never something she so much as considered when she moved to Skyrim and set up shop in an old bandit hideout, she's still dragged into the world-saving business when, through what seems to be coincidence, she's the one to absorb Mirmulnir's soul.</p><p>[Part one of a series chronicling Zahra the Redguard Dragonborn and her band of 'merry' mercenaries. There will be puns and idioms. There will be angst. There will not be nearly as much humor as this paragraph suggests (sorry).]</p><p>(THIS SERIES HAS BEEN ABANDONED.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Homeward Bound

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is a Helgen chapter. I know, I know. However, it seemed a good place to start, for multiple reasons, and I have mixed things up a bit from the same-old, same-old we all know to death.

"This is  _ridiculous_."

Ralof tore his gaze from the forests of Falkreath Hold and looked at the Breton. His eyes were still closed, his black-haired head tilted back, but Ralof saw the subtle twitch of his narrow shoulders as he tested his bonds, and the downturn of his mouth when he found them unforgiving.

"You're finally awake, eh?"

The Breton's eyes snapped open at the Stormcloak's voice and he shifted, jostling his apparently still-unconscious companion. The Breton glanced over and sighed — the sound of one world-weary. "So it would seem, although… Tac. Hey, Tac. Wake up, dumbass." He rolled his shoulder, nudging him as best he could with his arms tied as they were. After a moment he gave up and settled back, fixing Ralof with an ice-blue stare.

Ralof had the distinct feeling he was being judged and found unworthy.  _I guess I should have expected as much from a mage_ … he thought, shivering. Although he suspected he knew the answer already, to break the uncomfortable silence he asked, "Why did the Imperials tie your hands behind your back?"

The Breton sniffed, although whether it was from derision at Ralof or the Imperials he could not tell, and bit out, "Harder to aim that way."

"You can still cast?"

Now the sniff was definitely aimed at him. "Of course. I just have to…" He fell silent a moment, face drawing in on itself. A look of concentration. "Ah. I wonder where they got that from," he muttered. "In any case," he said in a normal voice, "I would have been able to, had someone not had a magicka poison handy. Usually tying a mage's hands is enough, unless they've been trained in focusing energy at the wrist in addition to the palm. But it's rare enough a situation where one would need that. How would they know…?"

Ralof blinked, wondering at the Breton's audacity to speak such things aloud.

"Ah well, some of my spells might have worked on the common soldiers, but the  _esteemed_  General is here, is he not? He'd shake everything off easily. No, no. Best to wait." He pinned Ralof with those eyes again. "You have Sovngarde to look forward to, though."

He started. He'd been thinking about death, yes, but to hear the Breton speak of it so casually was like a bucket of ice water on his head. "What—"

"Aetherius, pfft!"

"Be quiet!" shouted the driver, turning his head to glare at them.

The Breton tensed, lips opening as if to say something — more likely to  _cast_  something, Ralof thought — but just then his companion, still balanced precariously on his shoulder, stirred with a groan.

"Oh, fuck…" He raised his head shakily.

Ralof's throat tightened. Tac was Imperial, no doubt about it. His eyes were tawny, skin the typical light brown of the race, features sharp and hair bronze with a very slight red tint. His face was covered in dirt, smudging with the crimson war paint on his cheeks. A gash on his temple streamed blood down his face, sticking his left eye shut — the injury had been hidden with Tac's head buried in the Breton's rough tunic.

"Are you all right, Tac?" said the Breton, with the voice of one trying to hide concern. Ralof had heard that before — from his sister. She always had to be the tough one.

"No idea. What happened again?" Tac replied in a surprisingly cheerful tone, bringing his hands up to rub at his eye. Apparently he only then realized he was bound, because he froze, blinking dumbly at his wrists. He lowered them almost sheepishly.

"You were trying to cross the border, right?" Ralof cut in before the Breton could respond. "Walked right into that Imperial ambush, same as us, and that thief over there."

The Breton scowled, grinding his teeth together. Ralof wondered if he was angry at the interruption or something else.

Said thief chose that time to speak up, growling something about how everything was easier before the rebellion.

Ralof rolled his eyes at this.

"You two! We shouldn't be here. It's these Stormcloaks the Empire wants."

"Idiot," growled the Breton, "What makes you think we haven't pissed off the Legion too? Be careful before throwing in your lot with strangers." He spat the last word, his mouth twisting.

"Caïn…" Tac said, glancing nervously at the horse thief.

"We're all brothers and sisters in binds now, remember that," said Ralof with a sigh.

The Breton — Caïn — looked away, face softening. "A philosophical one, eh?" he whispered. There was no venom in the words, more like a fond memory. He said it like he had been reminded of someone, someone far away in space or time that he was likely never going to see again. Ralof found himself feeling sorry for him.

"Shut up back there!" the driver snapped again.

They lapsed into silence. Ralof knew it was more out of a lack of things to say than any desire to obey the Legionnaire.

~o~

The steady clop-clop of the horse's hooves beat out of rhythm with his heart as he stared out over the driver's head, listening to the sounds of the forest and watching the wind sway the trees. He tried to think of where the Legion would take them. The hold capital, Falkreath? It was a distance, but possible. Or at least, he thought it was a distance. His map had been lost, likely still tucked in his pack back where they had been ambushed, or confiscated by a soldier while he was unconscious. Along with his clothes, dammit. Of course the Empire wouldn't want him in the magicka-boosting robes, even with the poison and the binds. Besides that they were worth a pretty septim: unique, embroidered by hand in silver thread.

Instead they had undressed him — he could only hope they had left his smallclothes alone — and stuck him in this itchy tunic. Some footwraps too, for all the good that would do him. He might as well have been barefoot.

_Not that it matters now._

A low whine from his right jolted him away from his musings. He twisted around as best he was able — the binds made it hard — and found himself face to face with Titus.

Tac, as he preferred everyone call him, was swaying slightly, the movement barely perceptible due to the cart, and his face was rapidly paling beneath the layer of blood that stuck to it. The gash on his temple hadn't stopped bleeding, although it had slowed. He blinked at Caïn with unfocused eyes. "What… I don't—"

"Shh, don't talk. Fuck, Tac, keep your eyes open." Caïn desperately wished he had his magicka. He didn't know that much Restoration, just enough to be handy in a scrape, but it was better than nothing.

Nothing was all he had now, though.

Damn that resourceful Legion.

He tried to think, but couldn't come up with anything beyond delaying the inevitable. "Here," he said, turning back to face the Stormcloak, who was watching them with a worried expression, "Press the wound against my shoulder. That may help stop the bleeding."

Sighing, Tac curled up against Caïn's side. "Gods, I wish Maea were here."

Despite himself, Caïn smiled, imagining his tiny cousin scolding the Imperials before impaling them with spikes of ice. "Yeah, she'd be able to patch you up in no time."

"Hmm," Tac agreed, eyes slipping closed.

Caïn let him rest, but apparently the horse thief had other ideas, because he began talking again. Caïn snorted when the gagged man two seats over was revealed to be Ulfric Stormcloak, the "true High King" as the soldier who'd talked to him said — was the thief really that dense? Who else would it be? The man was obviously a Jarl, clothed as he was, and what other Jarl would have been captured as he was? The gag just cemented it. He had studied the Markarth Incident, after all. The Voice was legendary even outside of Skyrim.

He sat silently as the thief panicked and the Stormcloak talked of Sovngarde and last thoughts of home. Although he knew the words weren't directed at him, he turned them over in his mind, thinking of his childhood in High Rock. The plains of North Kambria, with the tiny villages, were beautiful this time of year. He wondered how his remaining family members would take his death. Maea was unpredictable, of course. They were never really that close anyway. But Côme… he would be devastated. He'd know before the Legion informed him, Caïn supposed. He could sense these things, innately, particularly when Caïn was concerned. What would it be like on his end for the bond to be severed? Painful? He hoped not. His twin was too gentle, too kind. It would destroy him.

They entered a town — not Falkreath, he didn't think, it was too far east for that — and he frowned when he saw the Thalmor. He had no hatred for elvenkind. He couldn't. But the Thalmor were an organization, not a race, and his spine prickled as he saw the General break off from their little procession and talk to them. He turned away to keep from doing anything stupid.

He tuned out the ramblings of the Stormcloak, focusing on Tac's gentle breaths instead. His stomach felt like iron in his gut, weighing him down. His arms ached. He could already feel the tell-tale itch of the brain that came from too many hours of magicka depletion. (How long had he and Tac been unconscious, anyway?) Could drive some mages mad, he'd heard. He'd never learn if that were really the case, now would he? Just as it crossed his mind again that yes, _he was going to die_ , he felt the cart slow and roll to a stop. The horse snorted loudly.

Beside him, Tac stirred. The rest seemed to have done him some good, as he wasn't shaking anymore, but he still looked exhausted. As they rose to meet their fate, he mumbled, "Sorry. Bled all over you." Somehow, he managed to crack a grin.

"Not like it's my robes, anyway," Caïn said quietly.

He refrained from mentioning how much more blood was going to be on them soon.

~o~

Hadvar checked the list again. Dammit. Captain Signe had neglected to follow protocol and take names,  _again_. He slid his eyes over the odd pair, noting the tension hidden behind the impassive face of one and the bland, tired, one-eyed stare of the other.

"Who are you two?" he asked finally.

The Breton's gaze flicked from Lokir's body, sprawled in the dirt, to him, sweeping cold blue eyes over the Legionnaire. He squared his shoulders and said clearly, "Caïn, of the house Guillory, of Daggerfall." He glanced at the Imperial with something like protectiveness, and continued, "This is Titus Tacitus, of Chorrol."

Hadvar sighed. "You two are both a long way from home. Captain?"

All it took was a glance from the short-tempered Signe and Hadvar knew. They wouldn't be getting out of this one.  _Collateral damage_. It made his skin crawl. "I'm sorry. We'll make sure your remains are returned to your homelands."

"I…" A helpless look crossed Caïn's pale face. "Thank you, but there's nothing left in High Rock. I would… prefer to be in Whiterun."

"Whiterun?"

"Yes. Ah, no need to go to any trouble tracking people down. They'll already know."

Hadvar was about to ask how that was possible, but the Breton just smiled at him — a weary smile — and turned to Titus. "What about you, Tac?"

The Imperial didn't tear his eyes away from the site of his execution. "Just about anywhere is fine, really," he said quietly.

At his companion's words, Caïn looked troubled. It was gone in the next instant, replaced by composure. Even when he looked to the block as well, he just looked contemplative.

For the briefest moment, Hadvar envied him. To be able to face death with such dignity… "All right then. Follow the Captain, prisoners."

The two joined the Stormcloaks in waiting for death. Hadvar walked around to the executioner, hating the position but forced into it by protocol. Just as General Tullius finished his speech to the Jarl Ulfric, an unearthly roar echoed through the surrounding mountains.

"What was that?" he found himself saying. An unpleasant feeling nudged at the back of his mind.

"It's nothing. Carry on." General Tullius stepped back to watch the proceedings, and the Captain commanded the Priestess of Arkay to speak.

One Stormcloak was eager for death, apparently, striding up to the block and glaring at him until the Captain planted her foot in his back. A swish of the axe and it was over for him. Hadvar sighed, tearing his eyes away from the head in the box. His gaze fell on the two non-Nords, wondering again on how they had gotten mixed up in this. The border, yes, but  _why_?

The Imperial was leaning on the Breton for support now, blood dripping steadily from his temple. Hadvar wondered how he hadn't just keeled over from the loss. As for the other, he was standing absolutely still, his shoulders rigid to keep his companion steady. Caïn seemed to sense his scrutiny, for he looked sharply at the Legionnaire. His look was a razor for an instant, accusing, predatory—

Then the feeling was gone, as the Captain called for Titus.

Again the roar sounded, closer he thought, and he voiced his concern. The Captain snapped at him, so he just urged the Imperial to the block. "Nice and easy."

The Breton snorted at this, but Titus hadn't moved. His eyes were open now though. After a moment he clutched at Caïn's elbow with his bound hands and lifted his head with great effort. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out, and it closed again as he swallowed heavily.

"I know," said Caïn, so low Hadvar barely heard him. Then he nodded towards the block.

With steps so measured he must have been concentrating very hard not to fall, Titus approached. Before the Captain could push him, he knelt and laid his head down, coating the other side of his face in blood. A sigh escaped his lips as he got as comfortable as he could and closed his eyes.

A second later they snapped open again as a third roar pierced Hadvar's ears.

"What in Oblivion is that?!" shouted Tullius, even as Hadvar was unsheathing his sword and whirling around to come face to face with the one thing he never expected to see in his life.

_Dragon._


	2. Knocked Down...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POVs jump around by scene here in these first chapters, settling down to one POV per chapter around 6. The title-pun will make sense next chapter.

_Great_.

The sooner he could get a wash, the better.

He'd settle for dunking in a glacier stream at this point.

He didn't mind being dirty (as Caïn-kins could attest, but  _anybody_  who wasn't up to his standards he thought must have been swimming in sewage, and that was  _everybody_ ), and considered a healthy coating of earth as natural as could be, but blood was a different matter altogether.

Especially when he couldn't tell where his ended and that suicidal Stormcloak's began.

Funny how he could think these things, but his brain did like to keep up the commentary. How couldn't it, when his mouth wasn't up to the task?

A flaming hunk of rock hit the ground beside him. When the dragon roared again, he very nearly rolled onto it in a panic. That thing was damn _loud_.

"Hey, Imperial! Get up! Come on, the gods won't give us another chance!"

Vaguely he recalled the voice as belonging to that talkative Stormcloak from the cart ride. What was his name?

_Oh well_ , he thought, as he rolled onto his back and flipped himself up. His vision swam from the movement, but he did catch the startled look on the now-unbound Stormcloak's face, undoubtedly at his acrobatics, before the man turned away and ran to one of the surrounding towers.

_I'm missing something_ , he thought, glancing around. Then the ground shook as the black… thing landed right on top of a guard, and all coherent (ha! Like he was ever that way even on good days!) thought fled as he stumbled after…  _Ralof of Riverwood_.

The screams of the townspeople and the roars of the dragon faded just a notch when Ralof closed the door behind him. He stood in the center of the tower, realizing he probably looked utterly terrified yet not feeling that way, just — detached. Like it had happened to someone else — like Irén or János or someone more likely to survive this — and they were sitting in an inn regaling the gathered with the tale. Over more than a little mead.

Or maybe he just wished it were so.

"Hey, are you okay?" came Ralof's by-now-familiar voice, and he realized he'd somehow gotten over to the wall and was now leaning against it. Knowing full well he looked like a milk drinker, he slid down to the floor and cradled his aching head in his hands.

Or tried to.

No one had bothered to cut his binds.

He looked up to ask if anyone could spare a sharp edge, just in time to see the door fly open. It bounced off the wall with such force that it would have slammed shut again if Caïn hadn't been standing there, breathing heavily and looking angrier than Tac had ever seen him.

Caïn stalked the rest of the way inside and kicked the door closed. He glanced around the tower, arms crossed over his chest, but when his eyes alighted on Tac he unfolded them and came over, some of the rage dissipating. Kneeling, he put one hand over Tac's head-wound and the other on the Imperial's wrist to feel his pulse. His eyes slipped shut as he reached for his magicka (it took longer than usual; the poison was just then wearing off), and Tac saw the gentle glow of Restoration envelop his head, and felt his sore muscles relax a little. He even thought he could feel the skin on his temple stitch itself back together, if he concentrated.

By the time Caïn withdrew his hands and opened his eyes to check his work, Tac found the cobwebs in his head cleaned out. It was a marvelous feeling.

"I've got a lot of respect for that school. Skyrim could use more healers," said one of the Stormcloaks, a wide-eyed young man with muttonchops that looked like foxes clinging to his face.

"Pity I'm not one, then," Caïn snapped irritably. He stood up and brushed at his clothes. He stopped abruptly however, apparently realizing he wasn't wearing his robes but the shabby tunic the Imperials seemed to have been carrying around just to force on wayward travelers.

As if to stop that tangent, the dragon roared somewhere close by. Tac recoiled instinctively and cracked his head against the stone wall; Caïn glared at him, but it was halfhearted.

They both shot to attention when Jarl Ulfric's deep, commanding voice echoed through the tower, "We need to move, now!"

~o~

Smoke burned Caïn's eyes and filled his lungs as he ran, following the list-holding Legionnaire through the burning husk of Helgen. The dragon was attacking indiscriminately, at one point coming close enough for him to reach out and touch its wing — though he wasn't stupid enough to try it — and he knew it was only a matter of time before it breathed fire over him.

He doubted he would even get a hit in before he died if it came to that. The Atronachs had proved useless, and Conjuration  _was_  his highest skill. Did Illusion spells even work on dragons? Like he'd ever be able to Calm that thing. As for Destruction, it would probably be like the bite of a flea.

All he had left was to pray — something he rarely did — and run.

They passed General Tullius, who barely gave them a second glance, but stopped short when they turned a corner into the keep area and spotted Ralof. The Legionnaire — someone had called him Hadvar — exchanged a few angry words with him, as if they knew each other, before they sprinted off to different doors into the keep, each yelling at Caïn and Tac to follow them.

He turned to Tac, whose eyes shone bright and alert despite the dried blood coating his face, and said shortly, "I'm a mage."

A cracked grin. "And I'm an Imperial."

They nodded in unison.

"Faction that tried to kill us it is then."

And together they ran after Hadvar.

~o~

Hadvar was a bit surprised the prisoners had followed him, but it occurred to him that he was probably the lesser of two evils at the moment. The two wouldn't get the friendliest of receptions in Stormcloak territory, he imagined. In any case, he was gad for their company.

He was even more relieved when he found out the Breton had Healing Hands. As he slipped his uniform off one shoulder, the other man guided him to a chair and set to work patching his burns. The tingling feeling of the skin on his back reforming wasn't quite unpleasant, per se.

"Are you a priest?" he asked, turning his head in an attempt to see what the man was doing.

"Hmph. Keep still, dammit, or you'll turn out looking like a prune!" He none-too-gently shoved Hadvar's head to face forward again. "And no. This is the extent of my Restoration, other than a basic ward… and that Turn Lesser Undead spell I never bother using."

"What about healing yourself?" Hadvar averted his eyes as the Imperial found some armor in a chest across the room and promptly stripped off the rags he'd been put in at capture. He wasn't a prude by Nord standards, but the casual way in which — what was his name? Titus Tacitus of Chorrol, that was it — he did it unnerved him. Hadvar chalked it up to culture differences. He did note the wide scar that slashed through Titus' left nipple and all the way down to his right hip, though.

"Of course I can. Isn't that the one spell  _everybody_  knows?" Hadvar could practically feel Caïn roll his eyes. "Tac! Don't do that!" he snapped, almost sounding — embarrassed, perhaps.

The Imperial flashed a cheeky grin in their direction, but slipped the underclothes and armor over his head before setting to work on the gauntlets and boots. "You going to change too, Caïn?"

"No. Even light armor makes spells less effective." Caïn took his hand away from Hadvar's shoulder and said to him, "Try moving your arm, if you would."

Hadvar complied, swinging it up, back, and around, then testing his sword swing. Aside from a brief tight feeling which quickly faded, his muscles felt fine. Rejuvenated, even. "Feels all right."

"Good. I think it'd be better not to bandage it at this point. I'm not practiced enough to be sure I won't restrict your movement. See a proper healer as soon as you can."

"Will do." Hadvar rose and glanced at Titus, who now held an iron sword from the Warden's chest, testing the weight. "Hey, Titus—"

"Tac, dearie." He grinned — something Hadvar was noticing he did a lot — and swished the blade back and forth before returning his attention to Hadvar. "Or Tacky. You were saying?"

Hadvar blinked.  _Dearie_? They were close in age! "Er, right. I know Caïn is a mage—"

"Conjurer, specifically," the aforementioned Breton said as he sat on a bed, tending to his ankle. Hadvar hadn't even noticed it was twisted.

"—but what are you? What's your style of combat?"

The tawny eyes slid over him, seeming to gather more from the question than Hadvar had meant. "Mmm, lightweight fighter. I won't refuse a shield if I find a good one or whatever, but I'm best at dual wielding. War axes are nicest but," and here he plucked another sword from the wall and tested it as well, "these are just as handy." He frowned, swinging them both at once, then abruptly switched them in his hands. "Much better. Now let's go escape under a dragon's nose."

Caïn smiled slightly at this. "Much better. After you, Hadvar."

~o~

The three of them ran through the bowels of the keep, fighting off a few Stormcloaks along the way. After the first failed attempt at reason he didn't bother anymore, merely cutting them down when they got in the way. They found a rhythm quickly enough: Tac would get in the first strike, as he was nimble and sure-footed, then let back off a little so Hadvar could absorb the blows of the enemy once the latter's shock wore off. Caïn kept his distance, casting Courage with one hand and Lightning Bolt with the other whenever he could be sure of his target. Hadvar was grateful he was more careful with his magic than most.

He noticed Caïn's limp now that he was looking for it, but the Breton waved him off when he voiced concern.

When they passed through the torture room, Caïn curled his lip in disgust as he swiped a dead mage's robes, then glared so fiercely at the torturer that Hadvar feared it would come to blows. Luckily it didn't, but the assistant was so unnerved by it that he hastily made up an excuse to stay behind. Hadvar resolved to ask the Breton about it later when they weren't running for their lives.

As they wound deeper into the earth, the dragon's roars grew fainter, but they kept an eye on the ceiling anyway, ready for another cave-in.

It was a good thing too, because shortly after a large cavern (in which Hadvar barely got a blow in because Caïn ran ahead and lit a pool of oil on fire), the earth shook and more boulders came crashing down, this time blocking the way they had come. Tac had shoved him forward just in time, and he thanked the Imperial breathlessly before they staggered on.

Straight into a den of spiders.

Caïn was leading, having gained a burst of furious energy following the encounter in the torture room, and out of sight around a tight bend when they heard him scream.

Panic flooded Hadvar and he hurtled forward, readying sword and shield. He turned the corner and slashed at the first thing he saw — a frostbite spider that had Caïn pinned to the ground, jaws inches from the stunned man's face. It fell back with a squeal, exposing the soft belly.

Hadvar made short work of it.

Seconds or minutes later he pulled his sword from the last of them and hurried back to the Breton. Tac was there, tearing a strip of fabric from his underclothes and pouring water from a filched canteen over it. Then he set to work wiping off the poison.

The spider had deadly aim — Caïn's pale face was covered in green slime, particularly around the eyes, which were tightly closed and flickering restlessly already. The full-body convulsions would start soon, Hadvar knew.

Tac looked up at him, indecision flickering briefly in his eyes. "Help me sit him up. Tilt his head back."

He did so, and Tac poured two healing potions down Caïn's throat, massaging his neck to get the thick liquid down.

"Damn. Were those the Frostbite Spider things I've heard so much about?"

He nodded.

"Know anything else we can do?"

Hadvar told him to flush the Breton's eyes, and he did so carefully, using the last of the canteen water halfway through and necessitating a bit of backtracking to get more. When they had done all they could, they exchanged a glance.

Hadvar started, "I'll—"

"No, no," Tac cut in, "You'd be surprised how light he is. I'll carry him — he's my friend — you just have to make up the difference in case we run into more trouble."

He nodded again, this time uneasily, and helped Tac sling the unconscious, twitching Breton over his back. Caïn was much taller, however, so Tac had to use both hands to keep the former's legs from dragging on the uneven ground.

With the supplies Tac had been carrying slung over his shoulder, he readied his sword and shield and led the way onward.


	3. ...Dragon Out

The bear was large: a sow, luckily without any cubs, but he'd really rather that she had found a different place to den. He weighed his options quickly — for some inexplicable reason, Hadvar had given him the choice of staying hidden or attacking — and realized that while his normally-decent sneaking skill might be a bit hampered from carrying Caïn's long body, he wouldn't be able to fire a bow this way at  _all_.

Not without putting down Caïn, which he wouldn't do. He knew the bear would go for the easy target once angered.

_Gulp._

He dropped to a crouch, flinching when Caïn's legs scraped along the ground. Watching the bear closely — she didn't move — he hoisted the offending limbs up again and whispered, "Won't be much use if she does notice us, I'm afraid."

Hadvar gave him a sympathetic glance and whispered back, "Stay between me and the wall. If it does come to that I'll try to buy you time."

_Such a nice guy._

They probably went slower than was really necessary, but they made it through just fine. Soon, daylight streamed from an opening ahead, the most welcome sight he had seen in a long time. Even better was the fresh air as they emerged — the wind was blowing the smoke from Helgen in the opposite direction, it seemed — after what seemed like an eternity of sweat and fire and dank caves.

The birds weren't singing, at first, but after the dragon flew away their voices gradually returned, and Tac felt all the better for it.

"Probably best if we didn't split up yet, not with your friend like that," said Hadvar. "If you think you'll be okay, though… I'm headed to Riverwood, hope that's not too out of the way."

"Not at all! We were actually going to Whiterun before we were attacked at the border and this whole mess started. Wait. Riverwood is on the way to Whiterun, right?"

"Looks like you'll need a map, friend."

He felt the grin split his face again, and it grew wider when Hadvar smiled back. "We had a map, but I have no idea where it is now. Probably confiscated by a soldier when we were captured. If so, I'm not going back for it. I'm better off without being confined by it anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean—" He flinched as Caïn spasmed, knocking their heads together. "Ow. I mean, I've always welcomed the possibility of getting lost and finding things I wouldn't have if I had a map to hold my hand."

Hadvar was silent a moment, thinking about this. Then he said, "Not the way I've ever done things, but it does make sense. Anyway, it's getting dark. Be on your guard."

"Guess there's no inns on the way, then?"

"No."

"Gah! I miss Cyrodiil. Couldn't take a step in any direction without running into an inn—"

 _Aawoooo_ … came a howl from the ledge above them.

"—and the wolves were smaller too!" he shouted as the beast came down on top of them. He dodged, helpless, and could only watch as Hadvar struck it in the face, killing it instantly.

The Legionnaire wiped his blade clean on the pelt. He turned back to the road, casual as could be.

~o~

They took a switchback and could see the river now. Hadvar said something about a barrow on the mountain above, but Tac ignored him and ran ahead when he saw the stones by the edge of the road.

Well, not stones, more like monoliths. They were a little taller than he was, with a hole straight through at the top and carvings below. Tac recognized them as three of the constellations he had loved to look at as a child: the Warrior, Mage and Thief birthsigns.

"The Guardian Stones," said Hadvar from behind him.

He nodded absently, having already heard of them and wondering which one to take. Not Mage, he was rubbish at magic — so Warrior or Thief? He remembered Hadvar's presence, and a sly smile broke out on his lips. He shifted to hold Caïn's legs with one hand, then reached out with the other and lightly touched the carving of the Thief.

He felt a faint prickle in his mind, but little else. Shrugging it off as just 'one of those magic things', he turned to face Hadvar.

The man looked a bit… repulsed.

"What? It's only for Sneak and Light Armor. My defense is lacking."

Well, that sounded pathetic. He wasn't lying, but he was usually much more convincing than that.

An uneasy nod.

"Fine, be that way. Best get moving. I assume you already have the Warrior? Okay. Ah, wait."

He turned back. Hoping it would work, he stood very close to the Mage, until Caïn's hands — his arms were slung over Tac's neck — brushed the carving there.

Although he felt nothing, he decided that would have to do.

~o~

Cold. Hot.

He was on fire.

Dizzy. Where was he?

The world was white. A flash of color in the corner of his eye.

He chased after it.

The world was blinding him. He commanded his arms to raise, to block out the white.

Nothing.

He looked down.

He wasn't moving anymore.

He wasn't there.

Just white.

Buzzing, now. In his ears.

If he had ears. He wasn't  _there_ , after all.

Voices?

A breath escaped him.

Well, at least he knew he had lips.

Now he needed a face.

A mirror. He could see it. Couldn't tell it was there, bouncing only white back at him, but he knew.

Somehow.

More cold, more voices. Very close, loud almost, but incomprehensible.

"—defense is lacking—"

What?

Wait. It was there, so close, so close.

Color exploded in his face, and for an instant he was all there, the river gurgling, the wind fresh against his face, the coarse stone brushing against the back of his hand, and, and— the smell of sandalwood and sweat overpowering him, so familiar he could have cried.  _Tac_.

Annoying, irreverent, baffling Tac, with his weird moods and easy smile.

Gods he hated him, but the man was  _infectious_.

His hand shifted away from the stone, and everything was white again.

He fell, down, down, the world tilted around him, and then— blessedly, he knew nothing more.

~o~

Hadvar felt a bit odd, running around with someone who chose the Thief as a blessing, but he felt more at ease as he followed the river towards home. That, at least, he knew.

A thought occurred to him as they passed the trail to Embershard Mine, and he slowed down to a brisk walk. "Listen, as far as I'm concerned you've both already earned your pardon."

Tac drew level with him, and as he glanced over he caught the ghost of a smile before the Imperial replied, "That's good to hear. I doubt the higher-ups will be so accommodating, though. I'd bet it'll take a bit for the illegal border crossing to be smoothed over."

Was that bitterness he heard in those last words? Well, he could understand that. It was ridiculous that one could be executed for crossing between provinces of the same Empire. They'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He'd been a distance away, rounding up Stormcloaks after a tough battle when the commotion started — Caïn and Tac, two weary travelers coming over Pale Pass laden down with supplies, had stumbled across the scene, by accident as far as he could tell. What he did know very well was the way Captain Signe barked the order to arrest them, and the way the Breton spread his hands in a gesture of peace before he realized the soldiers weren't going to stop. Then his entire body went taut, and he sprayed lightning at his attackers while screaming at the panicked Imperial to run.

Tac hadn't heeded him though.

They both fought fiercely, in that deadly dance that only comes from experience fighting together. However, even weakened as the company was after capturing the rebels, they had the advantage of numbers, and soon they had overtaken the Imperial, knocking the axes out of his hands and shoving him to his knees.

The Breton had whirled, lightning sparking in his hands, but faltered when he saw the dagger to his companion's neck. That moment of indecision was all Captain Signe needed to knock him over the head with the hilt of her sword, dazing him long enough to bind his hands tightly, forearms parallel to each other, behind his back. She had then tore back his mage's hood to crow in his face, and Hadvar had caught a glimpse of handsome features twisted in fury.

Speaking of which, the Breton was groaning now, head shaking fitfully. He didn't look peaceful, as one did in sleep, more like the fever from the poison had a stranglehold on him. His muscles twitched sporadically, with full-body convulsions spread in between, seizures that Hadvar could tell were beginning to tire the Imperial lugging him down the path.

"I can carry him—"

"No," said Tac shortly, eyes staring at Riverwood in the distance. Then his tone softened. "No. We're almost there, right? I can make it, easy."

"Yes, that's Riverwood. My uncle Alvor is the blacksmith there."

He sped up as the village loomed, eager to collapse into a warm bed and sleep the whole mess away. Tac seemed to have the same thought, because he kept pace easily, his mouth set in a thin line.

"Seems quiet enough. Come on, there's my uncle," he said as they passed under the walkway and he spotted a familiar figure hunched over the forge. "Uncle Alvor! Hello!" he called, relief spreading through him that the dragon hadn't decided to raze another town to the ground.

The hulking man turned, surprised. "Hadvar? Shor's bones, what happened to you, boy?" He looked Hadvar up and down.

From his uncle's face, he guessed he looked just as bad as he felt. Before he could come up with a comprehensible answer, Alvor continued, this time worried, "Are you in some kind of trouble?"

Because he knew his uncle would go dragon hunting himself if he thought he'd been hurt, he said quickly, "I'm fine, but keep your voice down, please Uncle. We should go inside to talk."

"What's going on?" Alvor said, even as he turned to go inside the house. "And who are—"

 _Thump_.

Hadvar turned to see Tac had fallen to his knees and was struggling not to faceplant in the dirt. Caïn was sliding down his back, and Tac was trying to hoist him up and get his own legs under him at the same time. Before Hadvar reached them, Caïn slipped all the way down, his arms catching Tac under the chin and constricting his throat. They both collapsed backward in a heap.

"Come on, friend," he said to Tac, catching his arms and hauling him to his feet. He handed the dizzy Imperial off to his uncle before picking up Caïn — he was still now, at least, and breathing deeply, though his skin was like a firebrand to touch.

 _Tac was right, he is a lot lighter than he looks_ , he thought wryly.


	4. Under the Weather

The house was quite cozy, Tac thought. A few years ago he would have been claustrophobic, but crawling through more dungeons than he cared to remember had beaten that out of him. Now he could appreciate the smaller Nord-style architecture more. The foundation was made of stone, but the house itself was all wood, making Tac wonder how they could hope to defend themselves from a fire-breathing monster like the one in Helgen.

The blacksmith helped him to a chair and he sank down gratefully, forcing himself not to lay his head on the table and pass out then and there. He needed to stay awake just a little longer. For what in particular he didn't know, but he was running on pure instinct now anyway.

Hadvar entered the house, held a whispered conversation with Alvor, then laid Caïn on the bed in the corner. He sat down next to Tac, glancing sidelong at the Imperial. He was trying to be surreptitious and failing miserably, Tac realized dully.

"Sigrid! Company!" called Alvor.

A young girl —  _a daughter?_  — came running up the stairs, followed closely by a blond woman, who gasped when she saw her nephew. "Hadvar! What in the world— We were so worried! Here, you look famished. I'll get you and your friend something to eat."

"Thank you, ma'am," Tac said, grateful but surprised at Sigrid's easy acceptance. She smiled and set a bowl of stew in front of him, which he tucked in to. He tried not to eat too quickly, afraid to become sick or offend these good people.

Alvor leaned over the table, fixing Hadvar with a no-nonsense look. "Now then, boy, what's going on? Why do you look like you lost an argument with a cave bear, and—"

Tac choked, swallowing a bite of stew too quickly, before it could cool in his mouth. The food burned as it went down, making his eyes water. Coughing a few times, he regained enough composure to say hoarsely, "I wish it  _had_  been a cave bear."

Alvor blinked at him before asking Hadvar, "And who are these two?"

"These… two?" said Sigrid, confused, but then she spotted Caïn on the bed and hurried over, checking his vitals and clucking over him like a mother hen.

"I'll get to that, but first, you know I was in General Tullius's guard? We were—" he glanced at Tac, "— _stopped_  in Helgen when a dragon attacked."

"Gods, if you say it like  _that_ …" Tac muttered, shaking his head. It sounded daft, even to him, and he said a lot of stupid things.

Apparently Alvor agreed on that point. "A dragon? That's… ridiculous. You aren't drunk, are you boy?"

Tac smiled at the thought.

Hadvar glared at him in warning. "No, I most certainly am not  _drunk_. It's hard for me to believe, and I saw the damn thing. Dragon flew over and… just wrecked the place. I have no clue if anyone else got out alive. We were certainly lucky to, especially Caïn over there. We used the cave system beneath Helgen to escape — there was a spider den."

"Frostbite spiders? I think Lucan was talking about stocking antidotes earlier," said Sigrid. "The fever's bad. Has be been convulsing?"

Tac nodded.

"Worst should be over, but the fever can still kill him."

Hadvar sighed. "Tac and Caïn were traveling across the border and ran into us by mistake. Captain Signe, well... She'd always been too happy to pass judgement. That's why we were in Helgen. Part of the reason, anyway. I need to get back to Solitude to report in, explain what happened. I'll stay a day or two to make sure Caïn's okay. That is, if you can help us out?"

"Of course!" said Alvor. "You're welcome to stay as long as you need. And I certainly won't turn away friends of yours, especially a sick man."

"Thank you very much, sirrah," Tac mumbled, yawning as he tried to keep his eyes open.

"Rest, Tac." Hadvar smiled, indicating a bed. "You need it."

~o~

Just after nine the next morning, Tac returned from the Riverwood Trader, where he had gone in search of antidotes and supplies. He leaned against the door, shaking his head and chuckling to himself, before coming over to sit on Caïn's bed. The man was still unconscious, although the fever had abated slightly when Hadvar checked earlier. It seemed he would pull through. Tac wasn't taking any chances apparently, because he fished a potion from his bag and said to Hadvar, "We're in luck. That Lucan fellow had an order from a group of adventurers for nearly all his antidotes, but I managed to swipe the last one."

"Not literally swipe, I hope?" Hadvar said, only half-joking. Tac  _had_  taken the Thief after all. People like that were best avoided. If only Tac weren't so likable, it'd be much easier to keep his guard up.

"Nah. I offered to retrieve some  _thing_  that'd been stolen from him. Told him I couldn't do it without Caïn-kins' help though, so he sold the antidote to me awful cheap."

"Uncle did say that someone broke into the Trader the other day…" Hadvar mused.

"Yup, and they stole — get this — a claw. A gold claw. And only that. Not a single thing else disturbed. You'd think they'd at least take any other valuable stuff, while they were there. What do I know, though?" He tipped the potion into Caïn's mouth and massaged his throat until he swallowed. The Breton groaned slightly, then was quiet again. "Lucan said the best bet was someplace called Bleak Falls Barrow. Hopefully Caïn-kins will be well enough to climb the mountain before the bad guys catch wind we're coming."

Hadvar blinked, pleasantly surprised. "Well, good luck on your journey then. I'll stick around to show you the path up there, aye?"

"Actually, I wanted to check in with my friends just outside Whiterun, make sure they know Caïn and I haven't dropped off the face of Nirn, resupply and all that good stuff. That Barrow is chock full of undead, most likely, and it's foolish to assume the bandits haven't woken them up by now." He tucked a stray strand of black hair behind Caïn's ear, stroking the flushed cheek with the back of his hand. "And Caïn-kins hates undead. No, the more prepared we are the better," he added quietly.

 _He's awfully affectionate for them to be just comrades-in-arms._  "Are you two…"

Tac looked up, startled, and must have seen something on Hadvar's face, because he laughed, well, more tittered, nervously and said quickly, "No, no! He'd kill me. He's never had an interest in anybody — I'm beginning to wonder if he's a eunuch or something — and besides he's too serious to go for a fling anyways."

"What do you mean?"

"Remember when we talked about maps yesterday? Well, same thing goes for people. I'm a free spirit, y'see. Can't be tied by anything or anyone. I've tried to settle down, and I've never played a lover, but I guess I'm still figuring myself out. I guess I'm weird like that, to extend my self-discovery phase far beyond the usual. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that if Caïn fell in love, it'd be truly, madly, deeply, and possessively. I don't want to hurt him by being what I am: selfish and flighty." He looked up at Hadvar, amber eyes so mournful and jaded — he reminded Hadvar of both a kicked puppy and a world-wise elder at the same time — Hadvar felt awkward just seeing it.. "So I keep him thinking that I'm just teasing him, because even I don't know what I want. It's easier that way."

Hadvar searched his eyes (he had to force himself not to look away) in the ensuing silence.  _Why is he telling me this? I feel like this is something he's never revealed to anyone… He keeps his cards close, this Titus Tacitus of Chorrol._

"So! Bath?" Tac said suddenly, breaking eye contact and standing up. "I think Lucan's seen worse, but he was eying me oddly when I was talking to him. Like I was a stain that wouldn't come out of his clothes or a three-headed sheep or something." He patted the bloody, ripped and ill-fitting Imperial armor. "And no offense dude, but running around in a skirt ain't exactly doing it for me. I'll poke around in your uncle's stock after I feel human again."

Hadvar couldn't stop the grin that appeared at the good-natured jab at his uniform. "Yeah, yeah. I'll keep an eye on Caïn for you."

Tac slipped outside again, and for the longest time Hadvar was too aware of everything: his uncle banging at the forge, his cousin and Ralof's nephew laughing as they chased each other in the street, the house creaking and moaning as it settled, the gentle breaths of Caïn as he fought off the fever and terror of the last few days. He thought about his duty to return to Solitude and found himself dreading the prospect. He had seen the worst the Legion, his entire life, could offer in the past days, and it didn't matter that Tac and Caïn were alive now, because if it weren't for a bloody  _dragon_  dropping out of the sky they would be nothing more than collateral damage. He would have watched two innocent travelers killed and been able to do nothing, would have been an accessory to their deaths. He wanted to keep the Empire together, he had never had a doubt about that, but he was questioning the path the Legion took to carry out that vision. And that scared him more than any legend come to life.


	5. Stemming the Tide

Skyrim decided to show the odd pair her majesty on the day they left for Whiterun, producing a cloudless sky, a light wind, and just the right temperature for travel. All of this was unusual for the month of Last Seed, even in High Rock or Cyrodiil. Caïn could see for miles — maybe he would have been able to see all the way to High Hrothgar if the Throat of the World wasn't engulfed in a localized snowstorm all the time — and he imagined the view would be even better if he were on a hill instead of in the White River Valley. Whiterun was on a hill, apparently, and the city's defenders could see danger coming across the plains days before it reached them.  _A good place to be_ , he thought,  _when cliffs are no longer safe_.

"—join the Imperial Legion. We could use people like you two, especially if the rebels can call down dragons now," Hadvar was saying as they stood on the bridge leading out of Riverwood.

That got both of their attentions. Caïn bristled, about to blurt out something rude, but Tac blinked and said hastily, "Uh, sorry Hadvar. I don't think we're Legion material. We appreciate the offer, really, but we're adventurers, not military. We are in your debt though, so if you need  _anything_  else…"

"Oh. All right, I guess it was a long shot anyway. You know where to find the General if you ever decide otherwise."

"Thank you for understanding, Hadvar. Bleak Falls Barrow is up there, isn't it?" Tac pointed at the ominous ruin looming over them from atop a nearby mountain.

"Yes, just go up the trail there. Watch out for bandits and draugr. Hope to see you again, friends." Hadvar waved to them as Tac and Caïn shouldered their packs and set off down the cobblestone road.

They walked in silence for a few minutes, but Tac didn't look startled at all when Caïn spoke up. "Since when were you so diplomatic?"

Tac laughed easily. "That wasn't diplomacy, silly, that was survivor's instinct. You were about to snap at him, weren't you? Is joining the Legion that repulsive?"

"No, but—"

"Oh!" He clapped his hands in delight, apparently at solving the mystery. "This is about that torture chamber back in Helgen!"

" _What?_ "

"Now that makes sense. You're right, I wouldn't want to have anything to do with them either. Hadvar seemed pretty squeamish about it, but he's only one man sworn to follow orders."

Caïn was about to say something scathing, but he was still feeling drained from the spider venom and found Tac in the rare position of being 'close enough,' so instead he muttered, "Yeah, something like that."

"Stormcloaks torture too, you know."

"I'm not about to join them either."

"Just checking."

Tac continued to chatter aimlessly on all manner of subjects, such as comparing the College in Skyrim to the institutions in Cyrodiil, but he didn't bring up the Civil War again and for this Caïn was content to let him continue in one-sided conversation. Caïn, for his part, watched the road and skies. He was uncomfortably aware of the looseness of his mage's robes, and the paltry enchantment compared to the set he'd been captured in. But it was all Lucan had when they had left, and certainly better than what he had taken from the torture victim in Helgen.

It bothered him. Everything he had read and heard about the War was specific on one thing: the Stormcloaks, calling themselves true Nords, didn't like magic and wouldn't abide a mage in their ranks. Why then, would the Legion be torturing one who was very obviously not a Stormcloak and likely not a sympathizer?

It occurred to him there might be another reason for the Breton's imprisonment, but he still didn't like it. The thought of himself in that poor man's place made him sick. It was too close for comfort.

Other than two starving wolves which they defeated easily, they were uninterrupted on the road to Whiterun. They made good pace, and having eaten a large breakfast in Riverwood, decided to postpone lunch until they reached the city. Even Tac eventually ran out of topics, instead humming random snatches of drinking songs and sea shanties. As long as he wasn't singing them outright, Caïn didn't mind.

As they curved left around Honningbrew Meadery and started passing farms, however, Caïn's ears picked up something else, the unmistakable sound of fighting — the twang of a bowstring, war cries, and above them, angry roars unlike any he had ever heard before.

The two stopped in midstep, glancing at each other.

Before Caïn could grab him, Tac launched himself headlong towards the noise, yanking a war axe out of his belt as he ran. He leapt over bushes and rocks (he was somehow more coordinated then than he was walking down a street). A cloud of dust rose in his wake. He was out of sight behind a farmhouse before Caïn could gather his breath to scream after him.

"TAC! Get back here!" Dread gripped his heart, but he ran after the Imperial anyway, wielding a Lightning Bolt in one hand and keeping his robes from tripping him up with the other.

He rounded the farmhouse and skidded to a halt, gaping at the scene before him. In the middle of a field, a large humanoid creature —  _giant_ , Caïn remembered it was called — roared and stomped, swinging a club as long as Caïn was tall. Two warriors danced around him, slashing at his legs and dodging blows sure to send them flying if they connected. A third person stood a few feet away, taking advantage of her comrade's distraction tactics to fire arrows in the creature's face.

Caïn's eyes swept the surrounding area, looking for Tac. Finally he spotted him, spread-eagle on his back, draped over a potato plant.

_Oh Divines_ … Caïn prayed, even as he scrambled over to his fallen companion. Tac was utterly still as he approached, but when Caïn knelt on the earth beside him and reached for his wrist, he croaked, "That wasn't the best idea in the world…"

"What?" Caïn asked, unsure if the Imperial was referring to his own actions or something else.

Before Tac could reply, the earth shook and the shouts of the warriors changed to cries of alarm. Caïn rose and turned in the same movement, heart pounding.

The giant was coming for him.

"Oh no you don't," he growled, even as the ground beneath him — and his heart — lurched with every footstep of the beast. "Not today, you overgrown bastard."

He brought up his hands, sparks flying from his fingertips. All he heard was the crackle of electricity; all he smelled was the sizzle of burning flesh; all he saw was the flickering light surrounding the giant's stunned face in a halo of purple and blue. The surge of power he felt in that moment — there was nothing more addicting, nothing more exhilarating. This magic was his to command, and it always had been.

Then, all too soon, his magicka was spent. The glow of the spell faded, and Caïn blinked twice to clear the spots in his vision.

The giant was still standing.

Even as Caïn weighed the pros and cons of grabbing Tac's war axe and making a last stand — even though he had utterly no idea how to wield the weapon — the creature swayed, once, twice, and fell to the side. The thump of the huge body on the earth sent shockwaves up Caïn's legs. His already shaky knees folded under him. He panted face-down on the ground, feeling much more drained than he should have. Either the adrenaline crash was worse than usual or the venom was still affecting him.

He dimly heard the warriors finishing the giant off, then a quiet conversation that he didn't bother trying to focus on. It was only when Tac said, "Are you okay?" that he forced himself to raise his face from the dirt.

"Yeah, sure," he mumbled. Bones creaking and muscles aching, he slowly pushed himself up.

Tac was still supine on the potato plant, but somehow he had managed to twist his pack around to the side so he could dig in it with one hand. After a moment he plucked out a magicka potion, which Caïn took and downed in one gulp. A tingle in his forehead signaled the return of his lifeline. He felt better already, although the lingering headache annoyed him.  _Rest, I need rest._

"You handle yourself well. You could make for a decent Shield-Brother," came a voice from behind him.

He turned, the words not registering in his mind. The archer woman was staring at Tac, a calculating look on her pretty face.

"Excuse me?" he asked politely. What she had said clicked then, and he choked in disbelief. " _What?!_ "

Tac burst out laughing, sitting up and holding his stomach as tears rolled down his face from mirth. "You — what — oh Talos — you did not just  _say_  that!" he choked out between belts of laughter, whole body shaking uncontrollably.

At first it was just shock that the woman could be so daft as to consider  _Tac_  — a scrawny Imperial sitting on a potato plant — a viable warrior, then the anger surged through him as he realized she had just brushed him off — because he was a mage, apparently, never mind that he had been the one to take the giant down. He whirled around to confront her, but before he could think of something to say that did not consist mostly of expletives, she smirked and said, "An outsider, eh? Never heard of the Companions?"

"Aela," said the enormous Nord warrior uneasily. The third of the group, an Imperial girl, shifted nervously beside him.

His anger simmered down just as quickly as it had flared, and he said tightly, "Look, I don't care who you are, and I suppose you think you're being practical or some shit by being so ignorant. But you sure as Oblivion aren't doing yourself any favors by pissing me off."

"Not to mention that I don't handle myself well at  _all_ ," said Tac between chuckles. "Or did you miss the part where I learned to fly?"

"Companions, eh? I suppose you're mercenaries or something?" Caïn continued before the insulted look on Aela's face could translate into a fight.

"An order of warriors," Aela said, finally turning to him and eying his robes with distaste. "We are brothers and sisters in honor—" Tac snorted ungracefully at this, "—and we show up to solve problems if the coin is good enough."

"So, mercenaries." His eyebrow rose in what Tac called his 'congratulations, dumbass' look. If there was one thing he hated, it was people who felt the need to soften everything they said. Even Nords — especially Nords, considering they should be the exception — did it.

"It's more than that—" she protested.

"No, it isn't. I don't care what you do for coin, but call it what it is."

"Come on, Aela…" said the Nord man, "We should be heading back to Whiterun."

Tac piped up behind him, whining, "Caïn, I really don't want to get in a fight right now. I'm tired, you're tired, let's head into town, get this Jarl dude to help, find a nice cozy inn, and die."

"Oh, fine." He turned back to Tac. "You need Healing Hands or a potion or something?"

"No, I— Wait. Potion! That's right!"

"What?" Caïn blinked as Tac scrambled up, apparently no worse for wear, and dashed to the fallen giant, crouching over its feet and doing something with his axe Caïn couldn't quite see. Moments later he popped up again with a cry of triumph, a — oh dear Mara that was a giant's bloody and probably diseased  _toe —_  clutched in his hand.

"What is _that?!_ " he said, recoiling in disgust.

"Our ticket to riches! A Fortify Health potion made with this is six times more valuable and potent than one without. I have no idea why, but who cares!" Tac tucked the  _thing_  into his knapsack and bounced across the field to start up the road to Whiterun. The trio of Companions were not far ahead, talking amongst themselves.

Caïn fell into step with him. Somehow he believed Tac's claim, although why a  _toe_  would be more effective than any other ingredient escaped him as well. "Do you even know any Alchemy?"

"No, but you should. Don't all Bretons have an innate knack with potions and ingredients and stuff?"

"What? No. I'm okay, I suppose, but Côme is pretty useless at it. Maea's better than both of us, but only because she needs it for magic-shy people."

"Well, I want the most coin out of this baby," Tac exclaimed, spinning around to walk backwards, "so I'll get Bubbles to do it."

"Bub—? Oh, never mind."


	6. Bolt from the Blue

The guards at the gate let the Companions in easily enough, but as Tac and Caïn approached, the big wooden doors swung shut and one of the yellow-clad men approached them, suspicion following him like a cloud.

"Halt! City's closed with the dragons about. Official business only."

Tac leaned toward Caïn and, with his hand cupped over his mouth, stage-whispered, "Bribe, persuade, or tell the truth?"

"Oh, shut up," Caïn groaned, rubbing his temple in a vain attempt to soothe the spike of pain that stabbed his head. "Riverwood calls for the Jarl's aid," he said to the guard, making his voice clear and authoritative — and inadvertently letting some of his Daggerfall accent slip through.

The guard started. "Riverwood's in danger too? You better go on up to Dragonsreach." He signaled to the other gatekeeper, who pushed open one side and waved them in.

As the heavy door swung shut behind them, they exchanged confused glances. "You'd think they would realize a  _wall_  isn't going to stop a dragon," Caïn grumbled, stalking forward. They passed a man in an Imperial Legion uniform arguing with a woman in a blacksmith's apron just inside the gate, then a boy darted past them, chased by a girl wielding a branch like a whip. Despite the dragon threat and the Civil War, everything seemed in order, peaceful even. He did overhear something about supplies for the Legion, but otherwise the rumors about Whiterun Hold being neutral seemed to be true. As for the dragon, nothing could be done about that, he supposed, save watching the skies. He didn't even know if the things could be killed in the first place, but the Whiterun guards, like guards everywhere, would defend their home to the death.

"You want to go together or split up? One of us can talk to this Jarl dude and the other can check if any of the gang's been through," Tac said when they reached the market area.

Caïn paused. "Together, I think. I remember the last time you were in an unfamiliar city alone — found you passed out in a jail, reeking of cheap wine, with two black eyes and a concussion."

"Hey! How was I supposed to know getting in a brawl with an Orc was a bad idea?"

"She went easy on you, dumbass."

They continued to bicker about that incident and others as they climbed the stairs, skirted a large dead tree (which they would later know as the Gildergreen), crossed a stream, and climbed more stairs. They ignored the looks from the guards and the wailing of the priest of Talos — though the latter just barely — only stopping their argument when the heavy wooden doors of Dragonsreach loomed before them.

~o~o~o~

Some thirty minutes later, Caïn was ready to collapse. Restraining himself from snapping at the Jarl's over-protective housecarl was hard. Listening to the Steward whine and simper was worse. But being "volunteered" to go barrow-delving and talked down to by the arrogant Nord who called himself court wizard had him  _fried_.

Tac, usually either blissfully unaware of Caïn's headaches or trying to drive him crazy on purpose, was uncharacteristically silent. If Caïn didn't know better he would have thought the Imperial was thinking ahead to their next move, but as Tac had always barreled headlong into everything, this was unlikely. Then again, Tac was a master of surprise, just usually not of the positive variety.

Whatever. It was making his head spin. And anyway, it wouldn't last long.

"Let's stop into the alchemist," Tac said as they descended the steps to the market area. "Stock up on potions. Who knows, maybe Bubbles will be in and I won't have to lug this toe into a barrow. I wonder if draugr retain their sense of smell.  _Do_  undead smell their own rotting arses?" His brow furrowed in thought. "A puzzler," he murmured, peering up at the worn sign for Arcadia's Cauldron.

Tac flirted shamelessly with the shopkeeper, a fellow Imperial. Though Caïn was sure anyone with half a brain would see through such ham, Tac walked away with a bagful of restoratives a year's worth of jobs wouldn't even begin to pay for had they been at full price. Arcadia even invited him back to swindle her again!

"Ah well, maybe Bubbles is out on a job," Tac said as he shoved open the door and stepped out into the crisp Whiterun evening. "Healing the sick or counseling the downtrodden, most likely sniping at them most creatively while she's at it." He turned to grin at Caïn, who stared back at him sullenly. "Can't wait to see the look on everybody's faces when we tell them we saw a dragon! I imagine Irén in particular will be most put out that she didn't get to stare down the fire-breathing monster."

"Irén is insane," Caïn grumbled halfheartedly. He really didn't feel like walking anywhere, but he didn't feel that tired either. Not physically, at least. He felt like his brain was shutting down, and also like he was… detached. Too much stress, perhaps.

Tac lifted his face to the sun, which was about to dip behind Dragonsreach, and hummed contentedly. "She does enjoy her gore." He shivered slightly. "I wonder if she's gotten into melee with a giant yet. She was so looking forward to it when I saw her last."

"Mmm." Caïn's eyes slipped closed.

"Say, where exactly did Princess tell you to meet her?"

_That_  woke him up. He shot to attention, feeling like a bucket of icewater had been dumped over his head as the blood drained from his face.  _Oh no_.

"Please tell me you know and that unnatural paling is because you just remembered you left the cooking pot on back in Cyrodiil."

Caïn ran his hands over his face, his gut doing acrobatics. "The letter…" he said slowly. "I had it in my bag at the border…" A chorus of curses rang in his head — the Imperials had probably taken it when he was captured, or left it in the wilderness. He had only read Zahra's note once, thinking that he could study it closer after he and Tac had entered Skyrim.  _Foolish me._  The new base was somewhere in Whiterun Hold, he was pretty sure, but for all he knew he had passed it on the way to the city.

Tac's eyes were starting to bulge. "Oh, oh oh oh," he breathed.

Caïn saw the panic rising in the Imperial and quickly stamped down on his own. Tac had the nasty habit of being a selective emotional sponge. He would doubtlessly multiply the problem in his head too; the same thing had happened not three years ago when they got trapped in an Alyeid ruin with a horde of zombies and a necromancer for company.

_Wrong thing to think about when I'm trying to calm down… Redirect, redirect!_

"Tac? Caïn? That you?" came a deep voice from over by the Bannered Mare.

Caïn froze, not daring to believe his luck. Then Tac peered past him, face immediately splitting into a grin that reached his eyes — reserved only for a few people — and he knew he had struck gold when he wasn't even mining.

Sure enough, when he turned, it was to find János himself standing on the steps to the inn. He was a typical Nord in terms of physicality — imposingly tall, broad of chest, dirty blond hair with a thin braid tucked into each ear, thirty-something and in his prime. His eyes, a stormy blue, flicked over them as if he hadn't been sure he would ever see them again. "It is you…" he said in wonder after a moment. He tucked the piece of paper he had been holding into his steel plate armor and crossed over to them with long strides, where he clapped Tac on the shoulder — nearly bowling him over — and smiled at Caïn with something like relief. "Thank Tal— the Divines."

Caïn blinked at the change, but János was already continuing. "We thought we lost you! Heard something happened down in Helgen, whole town destroyed. Thought for sure you'd been lost in— whatever in Oblivion that was. What happened? We expected you weeks ago!"

"Shh! We'll tell you, but this isn't the best place," Caïn said, glancing about for eavesdroppers. "And we need to eat, besides. It's been a long journey."

János nodded, a somber expression clouding him.

~o~o~o~

"We'd just about given up," János said, taking a pull of mead and closing his eyes in bliss. "Maea ran off with Briarlin to track you down. Seen them? They headed south about two weeks ago, and normally we wouldn't be worried but hey, this is  _Maea_  we're talking about. She's—"

"Doomed," Caïn drawled, drumming his fingers on the table in an effort to stay awake. They were in the back room of the Bannered Mare, a space cramped and almost intimate, but perfect for secret meetings. (The owner of the Mare, Hulda, had given János a funny look when he requested the back. Caïn assumed this was because from her view, the Nord had gone out the door, just to immediately come back in again.) The bard in the main room was awful, but his caterwauling was apparently attractive enough for a group of off-duty guardsmen to start the partying early, giving them the noise cover necessary.

János looked at him sharply. "I was going to say 'not inclined to go wandering off' or even 'not about to be mistaken for a Thalmor agent, no matter how stupid some of my kinsmen are'—"

Tac, who leaned against the door picking at his nails, burst out a surprised laugh.

"—actually. And Briarlin is sensible; he'd keep their profile low. Anyway… Anyway." He frowned, back to businesslike. "What on Nirn happened to you?"

Caïn sighed. "I have no idea how to even begin. Back in Bruma? Okay. We got the letter the 6th of Midyear, and would have sent a reply but the courier said we didn't have nearly enough to get him to cross the border again, not with the unrest and all. Same with the local runners. So Tac and I left the next day with two horses and three weeks worth of supplies. I was sure we wouldn't need more than that — not cold enough to be worried about snowstorms, not hot enough for the mountains to come crashing down on top of us."

"Let me guess, it didn't stay that way?"

"Oh ho. I can only imagine what Kynareth had against us. Wind and rain first, then freezing cold. One horse slipped on the ice and fell off the path — Gods, I can still hear it screaming. That was, what, five days in?" Caïn rubbed his head, trying to straighten out the timeline. The days blended together, a blur of near-falls and frostbite and ice wraith attacks, of weak sunlight and total darkness and so much  _climbing_ …

"A week," Tac murmured.

"A week," Caïn repeated dubiously. "Well, if you say so. The other one we lost while trying to cross a washout, so Tac and I had to trudge the rest of the way, with no horses and no supplies and you can't eat ice wraiths, trust me I've  _tried_ — and then! Just as we think we're done with the worst of it, just as we've started to descend and managed to get a deer—"

"A particularly stupid deer, considering we were both half-mad with hunger. I ran screaming at it with my axe and it just stood there while I tried to land a killing blow and kept missing anything vital. So polite, it was…" A dreamy look flitted across Tac's face, but was replaced by a pout as he apparently remembered something. "And then  _someone_  made me prepare it by myself!"

"Stop interrupting. Just as we've got a little food in our bellies, we run into some Legion soldiers that have Stormcloak prisoners. And apparently being able to see is  _not_  a requirement for enlisting, because we get mistaken for Stormcloaks too."

János' eyes went wide. "Seriously? My gods, I am so glad we've stayed out of this war. No one is looking good at this point. Not that they ever did, but… Anyway, do  _tell_  how you got out of that one. I'm guessing it wasn't Tacky's wit."

Said man grumbled something under his breath, but mercifully did nothing else.

"You're not going to believe it." Caïn shook his head, but that only aggravated his re-surging headache. "Next thing I knew we were on a deathcart to Helgen, alongside one Jarl of Windhelm. That's when I knew we were headed straight for Aetherius. And sure enough, the captain's had a bad day and sends us off to the block without so much as a glance."

János was cradling his head in his hands, groaning.

Caïn knew better than to pause for effect. "Tac gets called up, and he's still injured from when we were attacked, blood all over him. Hardly in condition to fight even without the ropes on his hands. I guess we were both in shock, but there was nothing we could do, you know? Whole troop of Legionnaires stationed there, plus General Tullius! I'm standing there, about to watch Tac die and I know I'm very likely next, when there's this roar…" He  _had_  to pause then, the fear and other, more garbled emotions of the last few days catching up to him, lodging in his throat and igniting a slow burn there. He accepted the mead that János passed to him without a word and took a sip. The honey soothed him — even if he had never been partial to the taste of the alcohol its texture was perfect. "There's this roar that seems to come from everywhere and a giant flying lizard drops out of the sky and sets the executioner on fire."

Doubtlessly János would have crushed the mug had he been holding it.


	7. Into Thin Air

They spent the night at the inn, János and Tac sharing the bed while Caïn stretched out on the floor — after warning them not to get into any 'funny business', of course. Tac had grinned and János had rolled his eyes, but fortunately for the uptight Breton, Tac merely laid his head on János' strong chest before drifting off to the sound of his lover's heartbeat.

When Tac woke it was to sunlight on his face, and he blinked in the bright rays before realizing that János had somehow slipped out from under him without his knowledge and was gone. He must have been more tired than he realized, to sleep peacefully while the Nord clunked around the room.  _Perhaps he concentrated_ , Tac thought,  _he can be quiet when he wants to be. Still doesn't explain how I didn't wake when he got up._

Slowly, Tac sat up. He soaked up the sun for a moment, letting it warm him inside and out.

"You really are like an overgrown lizard when you do that," Caïn said, his voice coming from the doorway to the balcony.

Tac whipped his head around, but he immediately regretted it. Fire shot up his neck when it twisted and he yipped in surprise and pain, entire body going rigid and lungs seizing for a frightening second. Then Caïn was there, sweet reliable Caïn, slipping in behind him and running professional but gentle hands over his shoulders and throat, then back to his nape until his fingers paused on the spot where the pain originated and still throbbed dully.

"Thought János would at least put a pillow under you, but no…" he murmured, and as he took a deep breath, magicka pulsed from his fingertips into the muscle, unraveling the knots there.

Tac sighed in contentment. Caïn's magic held a warm, calming quality that he had never felt in any other — perhaps this was from his affinity for Illusion, but Tac had never asked — while Maea was so brisk with her 'fixing' that Tac couldn't tell if the discomfort was from the magic itself or from her attitude. As for Côme, he had never shown any talent in Restoration at all, and had given up by the time he left for Skyrim, resigned to the 'darker' schools of Conjuration and Destruction.

Footsteps thudded on the stairs. "We need to talk," János said as he entered the room and shut the door firmly behind him. "There's something I have to tell you."

"Oh?" Caïn's warmth left his back as he went to settle a respectable distance away on a chair. He made the action look casual, but Tac wondered if he was nervous about being too close, and if so whether it had more to do with a perceived possessive streak in János (where none existed) or some stupid notion of propriety.

He shook  _that_  from his mind; it would do no good. "Yeah, Ján-Ján? What's going on?"

János crossed his arms over his chest, looking decidedly uncomfortable. For a moment he said nothing at all, just pursed his lips and drew his eyebrows together, flicking his gaze back and forth between his audience of two and shifting his weight as if weighing something in his mind. The seconds stretched on, a shadow growing over the Nord's face, until he closed his eyes and spoke.

"Irén… My sister has been missing since the end of Sun's Height."

A sharp intake of breath came from Caïn's direction, but Tac didn't turn to look. He was fixed on János, cold seeping into his chest at the sight of his lover's slumped shoulders and the lines on his face that had most certainly not been there before. He had never been that close to the aggressive, passionate and very  _Nordic_  woman, and while he certainly couldn't comprehend her gone or dead, not yet, he still felt the secondary pangs of heartache for a sister and — he turned his head ever so slightly to spot Caïn out of the corner of his eye, lost and small as he gaped at János — a brother with half of his soul gone, fate unknown.

János spoke again. "Côme has— well, he's been just as you'd expect. With no word from you, he was starting to shut down until Irén reminded him there was hope, but now that she's—" he stopped abruptly and swallowed hard, the knot on his throat bobbing. "She went out, to try a few tricks with the bow Briarlin and Zahra had taught her, 'without distractions' she said, and never came back."

"How is he now?" Caïn choked out.

"Holding on. Holding vigil. He won't sleep, you know. Zahra's had to resort to slipping him some of Maea's herbs to get him to. Even then, it's not nearly enough."

"Oh, dear brother my brother." Caïn buried his head in his hands. "We'd best get to him quick, let him know I'm still here," he said, voice muffled and strained.

"Agreed. Come on Tacky, get dressed. It's not far, but I'm eager to come home with good news for once." And with that, János hauled Caïn to his feet, clapped him on the shoulder, and steered him away. Caïn went without protest.

~o~o~o~

The journey north was mostly silent. Every time Tac longed to say something, anything to break the gloom, he found he couldn't. It was the strangest feeling, and one he had never had before: an itch in his throat that he could not scratch with idle chatter.

 _Tact? Have I learned_ tact _? Ha!_

The few times János spoke on the way, it was to mention that their base was an old bandit camp Zahra had cleaned out and re-appropriated, and that while there was a mine shaft on the property it was absolutely off limits because removing the various traps and poaching miscellanea was taking forever and besides until  _just then_  a grand total of five of their company had been absent for one reason or another.  _And_ , apparently the previous inhabitants had been poaching mammoths, and had barely started on one when Zahra came in and slaughtered the lot. Of course, no one wanted to deal with a mammoth carcass in the middle of summer. In fact, János said he was sure half the reason Maea and Briarlin left was to avoid being "volunteered" for the job.

Okay, maybe he did talk more than a few times.

"So we brought in some muscle from Whiterun and built a house on top of the whole mess," János said with a chuckle. "Zahra's calling it a "hall", though it's more like a ramshackle collection of rooms at the moment."

"Tac's stupid nickname for her isn't so stupid, then?"

"What, Princess? It still is, though it doesn't have to be the witticism of the Era to be appropriate right now. She's put too much time and effort into this mercenary work and it's all going to Oblivion in a hand-basket. The more stressed she is, the more she tries to hide it, of course. It's way worse than you've ever seen it, worse than I've seen in a long time."

Caïn sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. "Hopefully we can get back on track."

"I don't think things will ever be the same. I have a bad feeling about, well, everything."

Caïn said something then, something Tac didn't catch as more than a grumble on the wind, but János humphed in response. Which could have meant anything, really.

As they crested a hill, the former Halted Stream Camp and current base of Zahra and her merry band of mercenaries came into view, nestled at the base of an overhang leading up to the mountain range separating Whiterun Hold and the Pale. The midday sun shone mercilessly on the place — _it really is a ramshackle collection of rooms_  — and the wooden wall-fence that surrounded it, which sorely missed several posts.

"Welcome to Hragyeva Hall," János said grandly as he pushed open the gate and ushered them into the 'courtyard'. "It wasn't my idea, I swear."

"O-kay." Caïn was beyond caring, Tac could tell. He didn't even glance around at the scattered dummies and targets, or the book lying forgotten on a chair by the door. It was  _Notes on Racial Phylogeny and Biology_ , which Tac guessed was Maea's. Being a 'half breed' herself, she had an interest in race differences beyond that required by a healer, though she feigned indifference, even derision for the subject.

János shrugged and knocked on the door, but he didn't wait for a response before pushing it open. "Côme? Zahra? Anyone home?"

The inside of the house was comfortably warm. A fire burned low in the hearth at the far end of the long entry room, which was lined with bookcases and weapon racks. A table, at the moment cleared of food, was in the middle. Tac could see a kitchen through the archway to the right and an alchemy lab on the left. If he craned his neck he could see up to a balcony on the second floor, and at least four closed doors to what must have been bedrooms.

"'Morning. Were there any bounties worth taking?" A soft voice drifted down from what sounded like directly above them.  _C_ _ô_ _me_.

"That and more. Come down and see."

"János…" A barely-audible sigh, then footsteps coming around to the stairs. Côme came into view as he trudged down. He was shorter than his twin and softer, not as lanky, with hair cropped at his shoulders. Tac could picture his face — eyes the same color as Caïn's though somehow not as icy, less angular jaw, many fewer frown lines. Perhaps some more now, since his love had disappeared… Côme paused at the bottom, shoulders slumped. His back was to them and Tac guessed that he didn't want to be disappointed by turning around and not seeing Irén there. "Please don't let this be—"

"Brother!" Caïn had tears in his eyes as he rushed forward and hugged his twin from behind. Côme tensed, a spark leaping between his fingertips. Then Caïn turned him around and the attack was forgotten.

Côme gaped. Then he burst into tears, hands grasping at his brother's face as if to reassure himself that what he was seeing was real. He tried to speak but all that came out were strangled gasps of relief. Caïn was smiling —  _smiling_  — and murmured reassurances of his existence.

"Oh, Gods above, thank you, thank you," gasped Côme, the words muffled from his face pressing into Caïn's robes and the tears. "How— Where—"

"I'll make some tea," János said to the room at large. "You'll need it, I wager." While the Nord did that, Côme led both of them to the table. He had calmed down quite a bit. Tac could tell he was dying to get the story, but that would have to wait. "Where's Princess?" he said as gently as he could.

Côme started. "Oh! She must still be working on her Enchanting. That room is pretty soundproof."

János volunteered to fetch her after giving them their tea; Côme sipped at his with unsteady hands. Moments later, the Lady of Hragyeva Hall herself came down the stairs.

She was as beautiful as ever, Tac thought, but then again he  _was_  a bit biased. Oh, there were a couple new scars and her brilliant green eyes had dulled ever so slightly, but she had never failed to make his heart flutter and wasn't about to stop now. She always saw right through his acts. Or perhaps he just didn't want to toy with her as he did everyone else.

Zahra's breath left her with a soft  _whoosh_ , but she didn't smile until she was done looking both of them over. "Thank the Divines," she said. "Good luck at last."

She sat at the head of the table, crossed her hands in front of her mouth — Tac noted the calluses with a twinge of dismay — and, without a single interruption but for Côme's quiet gasps, Tac and Caïn told their story from start to finish, with not one omission. Zahra's brow furrowed and relaxed and tensed again, and finally, when the whole tale was hanging in the air around them, there was silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I encourage readers to look up etymology of some of these names, by the way - some have significant meanings. 'Hragyeva' is a compound derived from two Armenian given names, for example.
> 
> The chapters get longer, I promise.


	8. Interlude - Any Port in a Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand here's the first Interlude. I hate how it labels this as chapter 8, it gets my numbering all messed up...
> 
> There's a pretty blatant disregard on my part of established Elder Scrolls gene mechanics à la _Racial Phylogeny_ here. Also, the events of the previous chapter take place on the 21st of Last Seed, so consider this a " _two days earlier_ , back at the ranch" thing.

**19th Last Seed, Year 201 of the Fourth Era**

Ralof had been asleep when the bandits attacked.

He woke to the unmistakable sound of metal against flesh, but Greta's scream as she went down was what cleared his head and had him scrambling for his axe. Years of harsh wakings such as this had trained him well; he was wide awake and charging the nearest bandit before they could blink. The next few moments were a blur of flashing steel and men's faces; the ring through his arm when they parried and the splatter of blood on his cheek when they didn't.

However long later, there was a ring of bodies around him, and when no more came to meet his fury, he caught the breath he hadn't known he had lost and turned to search for more enemies.

_That couldn't have been them all…_

It wasn't.

Across the camp, a terrible sight awaited him: Jarl Ulfric, his idol, on his knees as a female bandit in scruffy armor stood behind him, about to deal the death blow. She swung a crude mace above her head as time slowed for Ralof; he felt his mouth stretch but he didn't know what he shouted in that moment; he felt his knees crumple beneath him but he knew not why; all he knew was the blood on Ulfric's bear fur cape as he gasped and the triumphant smile on the bandit's scarred face as the mace completed its arc up and came down, down…

And thumped to the earth beside a stunned but still very much alive Jarl of Windhelm.

The bandit swayed on her feet, clutching at the arrow sprouting out of her chest.

The next buried itself in her eye.

She fell over, dead before she hit the ground, with a look of surprise on her face, a look which would have been comical if Ralof's head weren't pounding and his vision beginning to blur. There was a cut on his arm, but he had ignored it as it was very shallow…

_Poison_.

It was his last coherent thought before he toppled over. He turned his head in a vain attempt to stay awake, catching a glimpse of a figure walking towards him from the treeline, but then the darkness swallowed his sight and he knew no more.

 

~o~o~o~

Ulfric Stormcloak was not a man easily wilted; nevertheless, he found himself feeling decidedly  _weak_  as consciousness crept back to him. He fought the temptation to open his eyes — knowing anyone watching him would realize he was awake, if they hadn't already — instead listening intently and allowing his body to sense its position. He was lying down on something soft — a bedroll, probably — and his hands were free. Odd.

" _How can a tree stand tall, if a rain won't fall to wash its branches down?"_

A woman was singing softly somewhere to his right. A scraping sound revealed she was working as she sang, although doing what he couldn't tell. Soft footfalls indicated a presence to his left, as well, although they stopped after a few seconds as whoever it was sat down on bare earth some distance away.

" _How can the heart survive? Can it stay alive if it's love's denied for long?"_

He could smell some kind of meat cooking on a crackling fire to the left. He strained, but could sense little else as he kept getting distracted by the food — he was starving, he realized.

" _Lift the wings that carry me away from here and fill the sail that breaks the line to home…"_

The woman's song was melancholy, he thought, but filled with a strange hope. He found it odd that a bandit would sing such a song, but even odder that they hadn't restrained him. Maybe they thought his injuries would prevent him from escaping and slaughtering the lot of them; did they even know who he  _was_? They must have, must have thought they could get a ransom or something from Windhelm. Or maybe they saw his clothes and guessed he was worth a pretty Septim.

" _But when I'm miles and miles apart from you…"_

It didn't matter. He was going to kill the lot of them.

" _I'm beside you when I think of you, my treasure,"_

He cracked open his right eye. At first everything was a bright blur, but he adjusted quickly. The singing woman was sitting a few feet away, her back to him. Her hair streamed in brown waves down nearly to the ground, but other than that he couldn't tell what she looked like or even her race. A pile of alchemy ingredients was by her side: blue mountain flowers, a few stalks of wheat, a clove of garlic, and what looked like the claw of a mudcrab. Alchemy had never been his strong suit, but he supposed the items were for a poison.

" _And I'm with you as I dream of you, my treasure,"_

He opened his other eye and checked to the left, spotting someone — a Wood Elf, if the pointed ears and dusty skin were any indication — tending a cooking pot over a fire. The elf was typical of his race, Ulfric thought, brown-haired with a prominent widow's peak, and wearing worn leather armor that would be unremarkable but for the fact that it reached up nearly to his chin. Ulfric wondered if the elf was afraid of getting his throat slit. A bow was slung across his back and a mace was at his belt.

" _And this song will bring me near to you, my treasure — my love."_

The woman reached the end of her song, humming a few notes before going quiet. She set a mortar and pestle aside, then stood and turned just enough that Ulfric could see her face.

His heart nearly stopped. She was a High Elf, plain as day. From the elegantly pointed ears to the golden skin, from the slant of her eyes to the derisive downturn of her mouth. There were a few discrepancies — her eyes were  _blue_ , for one, and she was almost comically short — but there was no doubt in his mind that she was High Elven.

_Not bandits then. Thalmor_ , he thought, mind and heart racing. Ralof was likely dead then — he was just another rebel to the Aldmeri Dominion.

He closed his eyes again, feigning sleep, when the High Elf turned fully.

"Briarlin," she said, her voice quiet as if she didn't want to wake the Nord, "is the meat done?"

Silence but for the crackle of the fire.

" _What_?" Disbelief choked the High Elf's voice. "You mean—" Her skirts rustled, and there was a pause, then:

"We know you're awake, my Jarl," she said softly, like he was a wounded animal — which grated on his pride.

He cursed in his head, but opened his eyes and glared at the elf, working all his anger at the Thalmor, the Empire and himself into his gaze.

She flinched. "Please, you're injured, and we don't mean you or your… your soldier harm."

"My soldier?" he growled, still not relaxing — in fact, he was calculating, wondering if using the Thu'um would buy him enough time. He sat up, feeling vulnerable and hating it.

"Yes. Only one other of your band survived. I am sorry. We were too late to save the others." Ulfric had never been an expert at reading Elven facial expressions, but she seemed almost regretful. "I swear to you upon the Nine that I mean you no harm. I have no love for the Thalmor or a stake in the War; I am a simple healer. My name is Maea."

Something nudged at the back of Ulfric's mind; his gaze flicked over to the Wood Elf. He was silent, watching the Nord with a closed face.

Maea sighed, and when Ulfric turned back to look at her, her eyes were closed. Slowly she knelt upon the earth, hands twisting her robe. She let out a heavy breath, reaching over for one of the potions lined up neatly where she had been sitting. Uncorking it in her lap, she looked down at it for a long moment. When she raised her eyes to look Ulfric straight in the face, the indecision and hopelessness in them nearly made him believe her earlier words.

He blinked, and the vulnerability was gone from her, like ripples smoothing out in a pond.

"You were hit in the head," she said quietly. "There might be further complications — memory loss, mood swings, dizzy spells. A concussion is best treated immediately. I fear I may have waited too long already as it is. But," a vague frustration flickered across her face, and she sighed again, "if you so desire we can see you to Ivarstead; there might be someone on a pilgrimage who knows enough Restoration or potion-making. But… your companion is immovable at the moment."

"Where is he?" he said, ignoring the larger issue for the moment. He felt fine physically.

"On the other side of the fire. I think you're okay for short distances. Just move slowly, and if you have trouble—"

But he was already rising, curling his legs under him and pushing himself up as if nothing was wrong. As far as he felt, nothing was — until the world tilted sharply and he staggered, trying to stay upright and hold his suddenly-agonized head at the same time.

The pain reduced to a dull throbbing, his vision cleared and he realized that somehow he had nearly fallen over. The only thing that kept him from a faceplant was one panicked High Elf, who was far too close for comfort: her hands trapped between their chests, eyes wide in panic and mouth stammering an apology. He blinked at her. Slowly he righted himself.

She dropped her hands and stepped back. "Ah… yes. This way. Please be careful."

_At least she has the decency to blush_ , he thought. He was still suspicious — it was too much of a coincidence that the two of them  _happened_  to be there, and that they  _happened_  to be elves — but for the moment they seemed content to keep up their act. Well, he would be ready for — whatever in Oblivion they were planning.

"One of the bandit's weapons was poisoned. There is little I can do but keep his health up and hope he will fight it off on his own," Maea said as she picked her way across the camp, often glancing back at him in concern. But he had no further dizzy spells, and made it around the fire — the other elf, Briarlin, ignored him, tending the cooking pot instead — and to a second bedroll, placed nearly in the middle of the clearing.

Tucked into this bedroll was Ralof.

He was a sweating shivering mess, Ulfric realized with a sinking feeling. His uniform was drenched, as was the bedroll beneath him, but his hands were shaking as if from cold.

Suddenly Ralof's eyes snapped open, and Ulfric would never admit he jumped at the sight of them: the whites nearly as red as a Dark Elf's, the pupils dilated so far not a speck of blue iris was visible. They moved sporadically, seeing nothing, then the loyal Stormcloak's eyes rolled back into his head and stayed there.

Maea made a displeased noise in the back of her throat. "He is getting worse." She glanced at Ulfric, a cautious look, as if searching for something. He didn't know what she wanted him to do or say, and in any case it didn't matter: the moment was gone. Maea knelt by Ralof and, sliding one arm under his neck, tipped the potion into his mouth. She massaged his throat briefly; he swallowed. A moment later he let out a light sigh and his hands stilled.

"Hmm," said Maea lowly, as if to herself. "I think I'll send Briarlin to Ivarstead to see if they have any Potions of Cure Poison. Unlikely, but who knows. Or… there's an Imperial camp southwest of here…"

"No!" barked Ulfric, ice gripping his heart. "You'll not be tipping off the Imperials, Elf!"

She lunged to her feet like a snake uncoiling and whirled round to face him, face twisted with rage. "I will do no such thing, you insufferable man. I am not your enemy! If you insist on treating those who are trying to help you as the scum of Nirn, then by all means try to survive in the wilderness with a concussion. Be my guest. But my oath was to aid any in need, not just those who are  _grateful_."

And with that she stepped around Ulfric, her mouth set in a hard line. "Is it done, Briarlin?" she asked the Wood Elf in a tight voice, who had risen silently during Maea's tirade and stood with one hand on his mace. His body was tense, ready to spring, and his eyes flicked over Ulfric with a protective wariness.

"I'm fine, honestly," Maea said, rolling her eyes at the other mer. "I don't need you to protect me."

Briarlin gave her an appraising look, but nodded his acquiescence and set about serving the meal — dinner, Ulfric realized; it was already evening — and the Jarl of Windhelm shoved aside his lingering distrust to accept a bowl. It was meat stew, flavored simply in the Nord style. It probably served better to make him relax than anything Maea or Briarlin could have said. (Although the latter seemed to be mute; he gestured, but never uttered a single word; Maea seemed to understand him even if Ulfric didn't.)

They had nearly finished the meal when Briarlin tilted his head towards Ulfric and shot a questioning look at Maea. "Oh," she said, "That's right. Jarl, I'm afraid we have to discuss… harder things. Like the soldiers who were with you. Right now they — the bodies are in shallow graves so as not to attract predators. It was the most we could do with only two people to take care of two unconscious injured folk." When Ulfric said nothing, remembering the loyal rebels who had fought for him and Skyrim, she sighed and continued. "I would still like to find a Cure Poison for…"

"Ralof."

"Ralof. Yes, I don't have the necessary supplies here. I used them all up treating some idiot who dove into a Falmer den." She rolled her eyes. "Alone. Mara's mercy, I wanted to throttle him… Nevertheless, without a Cure Poison, Ralof will still likely survive. It will just be a while until he is fit to travel again. I'd estimate a week."

Ulfric thought a moment. Could he spare a week? A week in the company of elves? A week of leaderless Stormcloaks? Talos, a week in which those leaderless Stormcloaks had no idea whether he was alive or dead?

Maea had some freaky magic going on, for she said then, "if you like, Briarlin can deliver a letter for you while he's in Ivarstead."

He glanced at the Wood Elf, who stared back evenly, expression blank. Could he take the risk?

"How long until  _I_  am fit to travel?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm trying not let my bias cloud me. Season Unending is/was gonna be a doozy, though.
> 
> The song is [Lift the Wings](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmjDstWlGBQ), from Riverdance. I've used the translations of the Irish Gaelic phrases.
> 
> (The den-diving idiot was, in fact, Derkeethus. The implied story in-game is that he was kidnapped from the pools _outside_ Darkwater Pass, and this is the case here, however Maea does _not_ care about the specifics.)


	9. At Death's Door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Puns and violence, friends, _puns and violence_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear these things get longer.

Zahra frowned. She counted three figures, bandits most likely from their movements. Doubtlessly there were more, either behind the arches that characterized the ruin or inside out of the biting cold. And it was  _cold_. Skyrim was beautiful, yes, but she couldn't help but wish the sun did its job better. Shaking herself out of that track, she thought on an adage from home:  _if wishes were rope, we'd all hang ourselves_. Ah, she had seen the truth of that many a time. With a smile she turned back to the task at hand.

She and Tac were crouched behind a rock on a mountain in southern Whiterun Hold, watching bandits move around against the black stone backdrop of Bleak Falls Barrow. Every so often their conversation would drift down to her position, but the only thing she could understand was the laughter. It made her gut churn.

Tac laid his hand on her shoulder. "No sense getting angry, Princess. It'll mess up your aim."

Zahra let out a breath and nodded, trying to force her teeth to unclench. She didn't know quite why, after so many years, the pain was still fresh. Just the thought of them enjoying life robbing and killing the innocent made her see red. Sometimes literally. So she took jobs clearing out camps and forts, and if she got a special thrill spilling blood she didn't mind overly much. On occasion she might stop on her way back out, wince at the gore covering the walls and wish she had a never-ending supply of arrows so she didn't have to pull them out and hear the squelch of flesh, but that was normal. Once, a time she didn't like to remember, she had been clearing out a large chest when she heard a wheezing breath behind her, and had spun around to find that the arrow she had put in the chief's eye hadn't managed to kill him after all, but merely paralyze him. Oh, how he had stared at her, pleading with his good eye, whether to help him or end his miserable life or both she couldn't tell. But she refused to take the chance no matter how much that eye prostrated himself before her, whispering " _Lady, Lady…_ " even if his mouth couldn't, and so she drew her sword and plunged it into his chest, watched the eye widen and relax and all life flee before her wrath.

One of the Bleak Falls bandits moved into range.

With the speed that only comes from rage and practice, her Elven bow was out, an arrow nocked and flying before Tac could gasp in surprise. However, she had brought him for more than one reason. His reflexes were quick, much quicker than the bandits, who hadn't registered their comrade was dead, much less the steel arrow sticking in her chest, before he was upon them, charging up the steps with a howl. He dropped the archer first, then dueled with an outlaw who rushed in, screaming "Skyrim belongs to the Nords!"

Tac's manic laughter drifted down to Zahra as she ducked in and out of cover, sniping at another archer who had been hiding in the shadows and spotted her faster than she had expected. Arrows whizzed past her head, but her aim was steady and finally the other archer made a mistake, dodging right off the side of the barrow. He didn't have time to scream before he hit the uneven ground and slid down the side of the mountain, coming to rest on a ledge above a two-hundred foot drop.

The iron arrow thunking into his side pushed him off.

This time, he screamed.

Up the stairs, Tac was already done dueling, and rifling through the pockets of the dead with the kind of nonchalance that Zahra wished for but at the same time was glad to not possess. "You shouldn't have done that, Princess. What if that guy had the Golden Claw? We'll never reach the body before scavengers get to it," he said cheerfully. He rose from the last corpse, putting a few coins into his purse and arching his back until it popped — in Zahra's view, ominously — before bouncing over to the massive doors to the Barrow.

"The Golden  _what_?" Zahra asked, arching an eyebrow. She paused on the steps, arms folded. She doubted she would be able to stop Tac from doing whatever in Oblivion he wanted, but at least she wouldn't be forced to follow blind.  _The things we do for honor_ … she thought. Then another part of her scoffed.  _Yeah, "honor."_

" _Claw_ , m'dear. I just remembered that guy down in Riverwood said the bandits that made off with it would be hiding out here. Isn't that nice? We can get two jobs done at once. That is, if Farengar was just being difficult when he said the Dragon-thingy may or may not be here…"

Zahra shook her head in exasperation, but ascended up to the doors, resting her hand on the cold stone. "It better be along the way. The target is the Dragonstone, remember, and we aren't taking any side trips if this barrow isn't linear. Now, shush. I'm willing to bet there are more bandits, and worse, inside."

Tac grinned at her, but was mercifully silent as she eased open the doors just wide enough for her to slip through, bow and quiver and all. She inched along the wall once she was in, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom and her nose to the dust motes attempting to invade her every time she breathed. After a moment she could see well enough to recognize the dark shapes of dead Skeevers on the stone, and the flicker of a fire beyond.

She signaled Tac, who slithered inside quiet as a shadow. In the dim his eyes glowed amber, petty light catching on his iris. It wasn't new phenomenon for those who knew him, but it spooked Zahra every time; she wondered fleetingly if he had some Khajiiti ancestry somewhere back in the mists before her people had sailed to Tamriel. She'd gotten better at hiding the flinch, the shiver, the hitch of air when she saw those eyes sparkling with mischief or killing intent (never directed at her, though), but Tac was a better reader than he let on. He just chose to let most things go when it didn't suit him to reveal his knowledge.  _I know you know that I know you know…_ It was an endless chain. She could only hope to be as good at showing and telling emotions one day.

A shadow moved in the firelight across the entry room, then another. Zahra closed the door behind her —  _remarkably well-oiled for a barrow_  — to cut off daylight from outside, then crept closer. She felt rather than heard Tac move behind her, breaking off to go left and moving from cover to cover. He could sneak better than her now, she realized with a twinge of dismay.

Once in position, both of them crouching, tension coiling in their muscles like the deadliest vipers of her Hammerfell, she bit back a sigh of relief.

 _Two_ , Tac signaled to her, cocking his head to the side to make it a question. Amber glittered in the dark. Molten gold, perhaps.

 _Two_ , she flashed back, then on impulse, turned her hand around.  _Victory_. This was accompanied by a stern look.

Tac smiled, readied his axes as reply. Zahra remembered, with dread, that he had a very different concept of victory than she wanted or needed. Distraction time.

The first arrow sliced through the male bandit's throat; the second bounced off the stone archway behind the female and clattered into the darkness of the stairwell. Zahra growled in frustration. The other woman made a noise halfway between a gasp and a snarl, reaching for her bow, but Tac was already there with a slash to the neck from behind and it was over.

Tac let go of the bandit's scraggly hair, letting her slide gracelessly to the ground. They stared at each other for a moment, the lingering dying and the voraciously living, but if there could have been a poignant moment there, it was lost when Tac spied the chest in the corner of his eye. The woman — who was she, once? — drew her last breath with Zahra alone standing over her, and the Redguard didn't bother disguising her scorn for what was, even as she pitied what could have been.

~o~o~o~

Arvel the Swift, he called himself, and so he was; the Dunmer was no sooner freed from his sticky prison than he shot off, like an arrow from Zahra's own bow, down, down into the winding passages of Bleak Falls. His pounding footfalls and laughter echoed up to the bemused mercenaries for several long tense seconds before fading away.

Tac chuckled darkly. "I don't think that spider was the deepest resident of this tomb," he said as if indulging in a private joke. "Well, he's got the Claw, and he did mention power—"

A scream from the depths of the Barrow, and Zahra thought for a heart-stopping second from the pits of Oblivion as well, interrupted Tac before something else cut it off in turn. She thought later that she had seen the Imperial, who was normally utterly unflappable in the face of terror, twitch ever so slightly, but that was it — nothing like her own instinctive recoil. When her heart returned to a steady rhythm (if beating much faster than before) soon after, she found herself smiling in satisfaction. Despite the danger, the bandit had gotten what he deserved, and now she and Tac were free to grab the Claw and the Dragonstone and get the hell out of here. Well, after putting down some risen dead, of course. It wasn't as nice as killing bandits, as she had no clue who the Draugr had been before rising by their own accord and it was uncomfortable for her seeing Tac hack potentially innocent people in life to bits. Arrows weren't as deadly, but left less marks by the same vein.

"I believe draugr lie before us. Very good thing Caïn stayed behind, it would seem," she said, drawing her bow and creeping forward into the gloom.


	10. Do You Have Enough Rope?

Of course there had to be  _bats_. Stupid barrow just had to throw  _bats_  at him.

"Oh, for the love of Kynareth," Zahra groaned. "Look, they're gone."

Tac peered around the pillar to find the Redguard standing in the open, utterly unafraid of being attacked by the flying Skeevers. He couldn't see any, but that didn't mean they weren't there. Still, Princess was getting impatient, so he crept out from behind cover and slowly stood up. When no bats swept down to murder him, he made the mistake of overcompensating for his ( _justified, dammit_ ) fear and strode ahead into the cavern proper. Straight into another flock.

" _Aiiiiiieeeee!_ "

When he became fully aware again, he was clinging to Zahra, sobbing and occasionally hyperventilating into her hair. She was awkwardly patting him on the back, making soothing noises, but when he calmed down enough to look up she was also glancing around with a panicked expression.

"Tac, get off me," she said, abandoning the rubbing to push him (with absolutely no force behind the gesture) away. "If there's a draugr hiding in here — I bet there is—"

"Oh!  _Oh_!" He stood and helped her up. She was still holding her bow, apparently was rushing forward to shoot the bats when he had tackled her, and he followed her gaze to the snapped iron arrow she had dangling off the bowstring. "Uh, sorry."

"No problem, I have hundreds of them," she said, dropping the useless arrow and inspecting her bow for damage. That, she only had one of. Or at least of that quality. The Elven weapon was unscathed, apparently, for she waved him behind her and proceed across a bridge and up a few steps to where a coffin and chest stood opposite… some kind of wall. As they neared, his ears started to prickle. He wasn't aware what exactly it was he was hearing at first, but the low sound became a chant the closer they got. Magic of some kind. Though why anyone would put a  _barrow_  to music that was more powerful than creepy was beyond him. Unnerved, he made a beeline for the chest as Zahra drifted closer to the musical wall.

"Please don't be locked, I don't have time for that…" he muttered to himself as he looked for traps (of which there were none). As he reached for the lid, a soft gasp from behind him made him pause, and he turned to see Zahra tracing carvings on the still-chanting wall that looked vaguely like writing. Not any script that he knew.

"'Here lies the guardian,'" she said, barely loud enough for him to hear, in a voice like one reading aloud a hard text. "'Keeper of Dragonstone…' ah, it  _is_  here Tac!" This last part she turned her head to announce to him. "But where, hmm."

While Tac was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that Zahra apparently knew a language he had never seen before, and wondering if it was Yokudan or something which would be downright strange to find in a Skyrim barrow, she turned back to the wall. "Ah, this might be a clue. It says, 'and a  _force_ —'" She choked, cutting off into nothing.

"Princess?" Tac asked, for Zahra had gone so still then that he couldn't hear her breathing, even. The chanting was gone, all deathly silent. Her finger had paused on a carving, and that was when he noticed that word was pulsing a blue glow. Like a—  _a heartbeat_. He started to walk forward, dread slowing his steps.

Then Zahra started screaming, and several things happened at once.

The Redguard crumbled forward, twitching and shaking half-slumped against the wall, her wide green eyes staring at nothing.

Tac darted for his leader, everything forgotten but  _her_  in trouble,  _her_  in danger.

Behind him, the coffin lid shifted, the scraping sound drowned out by the screams, then was burst open by a draugr stronger in undeath than any living man. It rose slowly, looking about with unnaturally blue eyes, and when it saw the intruders upon its domain it hissed a challenge.

Zahra wasn't moving anymore, didn't respond to his voice or the hand on her shoulder as he crouched beside her. Tac had barely registered the hiss and started to look up when the ancient sword came for his head. He ducked entirely out of instinct; it bounced off the wall behind him and the draugr staggered back with a growl. By the time it recovered for the next blow Tac was already up and lunging under the next swing at his neck.

Dust tickled his nose; he had never been so close to an undead. The smell of leather and ages unknown was overpowering as his move took him within inches of the wrinkled face before he darted away again with a hack at the draugr's exposed and emaciated ribs. Normally he would tease his opponent, frustrating them until they got sloppy, but a draugr was a draugr and besides this one was considerably stronger than he was used to. Fast as well.

He needed to end this fight now. The draugr growled something he didn't understand, but more importantly it had paused to say it and— yes! There was his opening!

One axe bit into the withered flesh of the bonewalker's sword arm; the other swung around in a wide arc to lodge deep in its skull. The draugr dropped instantly, dragging Tac down with it before he could loosen his grip.

He panted on the ground, staring into the now-dark eyes to confirm that the thing was dead —  _deader_ , anyway — before yanking out his war axes and stumbling back over to where Zahra was staring at him with alert, if confused, eyes. She raised her head, hissed in pain, immediately laid it back down again. Tac fished around for one of the squat red bottles he had bought from Arcadia…  _two days ago? Three? Ah, there it is_. He squatted back down and helped her drink the contents. After a moment she tried to move again, this time successfully sitting up with her back to the wall. The look she gave him was tired.

"Are you…" he started.

"I feel fine, just that I really want out of this barrow, but that's normal." She thought for a moment, tilting back to look at the dark and silent carvings above her. "That word. Force. It's strange. When I read it in my head — and I don't know how I knew what it was saying — I felt nothing. But when I said it, I felt… I felt like something detached from the wall and entered my head. I saw that carving and heard voices saying 'Fus, fus, fus' over and over and over—" she shuddered. "I swear one of them sounded like me. Like I was speaking. Then, I woke up and saw you fighting that draugr. I am so sorry, Tac."

"I'm fine, Princess. Ain't no undead too bad for me to get 'em. How are you? Feel any different? Magic like that has to do something. Unless it's just to immobilize you while the guardian dude wakes up."

"Hmm. It didn't feel like any magic I've known. Actually…" She tilted her head, focusing inward. "Mm. I feel like there's something new in me now, but I can't grasp it. It slips away."

"Huh. That's ominous. Let's get you in to see a priestess or summat after we deliver the Dragonstone, okay?"

She nodded. "Oh! The Dragonstone! Let's look for it. I'm betting it's either in the chest or on the draugr. Come on, help me up." He did, and she stood for a moment regaining her balance before striding over to the guardian as if nothing had happened. She slid the Dragonstone, an obviously heavy block of what might have been unrefined ebony, out from under its chestplate and showed it to him. It was covered in carvings, but he didn't bother looking at them long. There was a chest to open and fresh air to breathe.

They found a bag of some hundred gold and a petty soul gem in the chest, along with an iron helmet that glowed with enchantment. Zahra tried it on and announced that it fortified Alchemy; they saved that to give to Maea when she returned. There was also the ancient-looking sword with a frost enchantment that the guardian had wielded; they took that too. Even if it wasn't of use to anyone, it would fetch something in a store.

They found a back exit to a ledge overlooking Lake Ilinalta. It was pitch dark as they carefully descended the cliff and headed towards Riverwood, following the opposite side of the White River and looking for a place to cross safely. They skirted around a wilderness cabin along the way, and did not find a place to cross until they were past Riverwood proper and on the bridge. The lights on in the inn mocked them as they had to backtack, but they took one look at each other — there were bags under Zahra's eyes,  _bags_  — and stumbled into the Sleeping Giant.

The main room was deserted when they came in, but within seconds a Nord man wearing a nightshirt poked his head in from the back.  _Goody_ , they had just woken him up.

"What day is it?" groaned Tac as he used the counter to hold himself up. Zahra was a little better, but she was still swaying on her feet as she dug in her coin purse.

"Must be early morning of the 23rd now," said the innkeeper, staring at them.

"Oh. That's good. Hear that, Princess? It only took us one day to get through that whole barrow. Was sure it'd been a week," Tac said, fixing a stupid grin to his face. Gods, he was tired.

"Barrow? You cleared out Bleak Falls Barrow?" the innkeeper asked in disbelief.

"Yes. We'll tell you the story tomorrow if you'd like to hear. Right now we would like a room, please." Zahra had counted out ten septims and now she slid them across the counter, exhaustion adding a bite to her voice.

The Nord frowned but took the money, pointing them to a guest room then trundling off back to his own rest. Tac waved her into the narrow bed and took the floor, obviously surprising her by not wanting to snuggle. Well, he  _had_  wanted to, but they were both tired, he wouldn't be able to handle it if it progressed to something more, and besides the bed was impossibly small and likely squeaky.

~o~o~o~

They ended up telling Orgnar, who was technically just the  _bar_ keeper, an abridged version of the story the following afternoon. Both of them appreciated the extra rest, even if it would bring them into Whiterun too late to drop off the Dragonstone. Farengar could wait one extra day.

Delphine, the actual innkeeper, came to listen for a few moments. She left when Tac pulled out the Dragonstone, citing 'inn business' to do, and they didn't see her again. He suspected she was unnerved by the hunk of rock, though why he had no clue. Perhaps it had something to do with the chanting wall. As for that part of the tale, Zahra pulled him aside and suggested they not mention that before she got in to see the healer, in case it was a bad omen, or worse, a Nord thing.

"Divines know János keeps me together," she said, "but his culture can be off-putting sometimes. Hating magic is just—" and she cut off, sighing. "He's no problem, and Irén was over that instinct by the time she… Well, I'm damn sure they're the exception to the rule."

He was fairly sure that particular trait was something to do with the sibling's parents. Still, he he understood her fear and managed to check his tongue around Orgnar, who congratulated them on cleaning out Bleak Falls and "makin' these parts a little safer" for the townsfolk. Tac wondered if he knew who had sent the Whiterun guards over. He decided any attention he would get for claiming that honor wasn't worth it. He did say hello to one of the yellow-clad men as he patrolled past the Inn. Apparently the guy recognized him.

Tac nearly forgot to return the Claw, but Zahra complained that it was digging into her side just before they left, and thus Lucan Valerius was made a happy man and the two travelers were made many Septims richer. The sword of cold was getting awfully heavy by then, so Zahra let him stop in to see Alvor and sell that and a couple other pieces from the Barrow. The blacksmith, too, was very glad Bleak Falls had been swept clean, and gave Tac a tidy bonus for the good deed, and for helping Hadvar before. Tac was surprised that he had accomplished so much in less than a week; indeed, he was surprised he had  _survived_  the last week. Since when was he so unlucky and lucky at the same time?

With all this, it was ten o'clock by the time they reached Whiterun. The guards were just about to lock the gate, they said, but they made an exception for the oft-visitor Zahra and the something-of-a-local-hero-for-some-reason Tac, and they did not have to spend the night camping on the tundra.

~o~o~o~

The next morning found Tac and Zahra in Dragonsreach, chatting with Jarl Balgruuf before his official court visiting hours began. Farengar had some sort of cold, and was still abed. Therefore the two mercenaries had their backs turned and did not see the woman in leather armor slip into the wizard's room.

When Balgruuf simply couldn't delay court any longer, Zahra said it was time to drop off the Dragonstone whether Farengar was awake or not. Tac shrugged, not caring one way or another how they went about it. And truthfully, he didn't. Farengar might, at one time, have been the kind of Nord Tac would follow after like a lost puppy, but that had changed the instant he had opened his mouth and talked down to  _Caïn_ , of all people. Now the wizard was merely another person he had no particular opinion on.

That was probably going to change, though, because when they went into the side room, Tac lugging the heavier-by-the-second Dragonstone, Farengar was quite awake and chatting with a woman. Her hood was up but she sounded oddly familiar. Zahra apparently knew who she was, because she drew in a sharp breath, alerting the woman.

"You have visitors."

Farengar glanced up from where he had been flipping through an ancient-looking book, eyes alighting on Zahra first. She tilted her head towards Tac, still watching the woman.

"Ah, you're back from Bleak Falls Barrow! You didn't die?" Farengar's voice was surprised, which made Tac bristle, but then the wizard continued, "Where's— Never mind, you've got it and that's what matters." He came forward, plucking the Stone out of Tac's hands and settling it on the table. "You are a cut above the usual brutes the Jarl sends to me. My… associate, here, will be most pleased. She discovered it's location, by the way, and has not yet told me how."

"Is that so?" Zahra murmured, brow raising. The two women were staring at each other in a way that made Tac quite uncomfortable.  _Is a fight imminent?_  Farengar seemed oblivious to the tension the Imperial could feel as distinctly as his armor.

"Farengar!"

The staring contest broke as all of them turned towards the main hall, and the panicked housecarl sprinting towards them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some conjecture on Word Walls - some say they only pull out the light and sound effects for the Dragonborn, others point to a piece of dialogue in-game for evidence that they at least chant to normal people. My headcanon is that they whisper the chant for everybody, but use the full chant volume and word-glow only for the Dragonborn and people close to the Dragonborn (this point will be expanded on later). Of course the Dragonborn remains the only person who can read the Walls without training, but only if she's concentrating on the text; otherwise, it's just the usual dizziness and Word-mantra she mentions here.
> 
> The chapter title is a reference to the "if you give someone enough rope, they'll hang themselves" idiom, as well as an adage mentioned in the previous chapter.


	11. Rise to the Occasion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guest starring...

Aela only needed the guard who came to ask for help to gasp out one word before she was bolting out the doors of Jorrvaskr, waving at Farkas to stay behind. He — and the rest of the Circle — would be useless against this foe, and she would not risk the whelps if everything went wrong. Besides, she wasn't entirely sure it wasn't a fabrication of a guard. They were not to the standards of the Companions — they panicked easily, for one, and little was required of the city guards but dealing with brawls and thieves, for another. If it  _were_  true, she could capture glory for the Companions… and would have finally killed something Vilkas hadn't.

She paused on the stairs long enough to conclude that the dragon was not menacing Whiterun proper; it must have been out on the plains somewhere. The scent of panic wasn't strong enough for the citizens to know yet.

Below, she spotted Irileth skirting the Gildergreen. The housecarl was followed closely by two figures Aela didn't immediately recognize. Something about the male in studded armor was familiar though, and as she ran to catch up she tried to remember.  _A job?_  She  _had_  been out on a lot of jobs lately. It was pure luck or fate that _she_  had been in Jorrvaskr and not the twins or Skjor, all of whom had terrible aim with a bow.

The trio flew past a startled Amren, the female pausing long enough to haul him back to his feet and say something that sounded like "You'll see later!" before she was off again. He had the sense to dive out of the way rather than be barreled over again when Aela rushed by not a full second after. Next were Idolaf and Olfrid, the former of which reached out to still the male and ask what was going on. Irileth reached over and yanked him back into step. Aela was sure she saw the man stuck his tongue out at the confused Battle-Borns as he and the others disappeared around the corner by Carlotta Valentia's house.

Irileth was already giving a speech to the assembled guardsmen — five of them,  _pitiful_  — when Aela arrived at the bottom of the stairs. The housecarl acknowledged the Companion's presence with a nod but otherwise focused on the reluctant troops.

"Hey, it's Aela! Come to find possible glory and certain death by flying lizard?" said the man in studded armor, grinning at her through the red warpaint on his face. He and the woman were standing behind Irileth, who was by now insulting the guard's Nord pride to get them to fight the dragon.

_Ah, now I remember him._  "Tac, was it? The Companions will not sit by while there is glory to be found, no. What are you doing here?"

The Redguard with the startlingly green eyes turned, swept an appraising gaze over the Huntress, and said, "Helgen. He's a survivor, and thus has the most experience with dragons out of anyone here." Now that she was closer she saw a woman after her own heart: with the leather armor, well-cared for Elven bow, and quiver full of a motley of arrows, she was obviously a ranger of some description. Aela was sure she had seen her before too, though perhaps not as recently.

"Even if it was spent running and screaming," Tac said, a nostalgic look on his face.  _Yes, definitely unhinged. Though, just to survive an encounter with a dragon which destroyed an entire town_ _…!_

"Yes, well, it's still noteworthy." The Redguard turned back to Aela. "I'm glad I'm not the only archer here — I imagine we'll need as many arrows flying as possible to bring down a dragon. Oh! My name is Zahra." She bobbed her curly-haired head.

"Aela the Huntress, of Jorr—"

"Let's move out!" shouted Irileth just then, and they were off. Six Nords, a Dunmer, a Redguard and a most-definitely-insane Imperial on a mission to slay a dragon.

"What if it's the same dragon?" said Tac suddenly as they crossed the drawbridge, the blood draining out of his face.

Zahra shouted back, " _What if it isn_ _'t?!_ "

~o~o~o~

It wasn't. Tac's whoop of relief — immediately cut off by the scream of an incinerated guardsman as it was — confirmed that. "Stick close to the tower until it lands!" Zahra shouted at him. Aela had noticed on the way that the idiot carried only his war axes and leather armor. She gritted her teeth as the dragon made another pass, a spray of fire erupting from its mouth and nearly hitting Irileth, who snarled and taunted the beast.

As for Aela herself, she ran back and forth dodging both fire from the sky and the burning rubble on the ground. The dragon was swift of wing, dive-bombing the defenders constantly. Aela swore shamelessly as her shots missed again and again. She had to keep stepping back as the dragon swept close. It seemed to be herding them, almost, which Aela found highly disturbing.

Worst of all, the dragon was  _talking_.

Its voice was deep and reminded Aela of a piece of Dwarven machinery she had seen in one of her jobs years ago. It switched between Tamrielic and a strange guttural language she found suited it perfectly, taunting Irileth and the guardsmen right back as they stumbled around in thick black smoke and tripped over rubble.

The air was filled with curses and grunts and the dragon's laughter. Only Zahra was absolutely silent as she tracked the dragon, waiting for an opening. Finally she saw one and got in a lucky shot, piercing a leathery wing. It annoyed their foe well enough that it wheeled around and hovered in midair, taking in a deep breath to breathe fire at the Redguard, who was cornered against a fallen stone.

_YOL_ _…_

Zahra fired again. The iron arrow flew through several rows of teeth and lodged in the dragon's maw, knocking its head back with enough force that when the firestream came a second later it shot nearly vertical. Those great leathery brown wings flapped furiously as it tried to stay airborne, but Aela and the guardsmen shot as fast as they could to make those wings useless. Irileth leapt onto the stone behind Zahra and flung lightning at the dragon's face, screaming Dunmer obscenities. Under their combined assault the dragon crashed to the earth. Aela stumbled at the impact, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Zahra, the closest, fall to her knees before scrambling out of the way of the dragon's snapping jaws. She recovered enough to draw a sword at her hip and slash at the snout as it swung back again, drawing a scream of defiance or pain from the great beast. "Good, it's down! Keep fighting men, we're not done yet!" Irileth was shouting from somewhere.

Suddenly something barreled right past Aela and knocked her arm, making her arrow fly off into the distance and a curse to jump to her lips. She whirled to see which guard had been stupid enough to muck up what could have been a killing shot, ready to tear into him, dragon or no dragon.

It wasn't a guard though. It was Tac, whom Aela had completely forgotten about. The mad Imperial darted around the dragon's neck, slashing with his axes and laughing. Laughing even as the dragon slammed into him with its head and he went sprawling. He was up again so quickly Aela was sure he'd feel it later, and lunged right back in, this time so close to the jaws Aela was sure he'd be chomped in half.

But it seemed the lunatic had a plan. The next time the dragon pulled back to ready another snap, he jumped on its snout and clung there with one arm as the other hacked at the enormous yellow eyes. Its jaws snapped ineffectually as the great scaly head shook back and forth trying to dislodge him. Tac was stubborn as a leech, however. The dragon screamed when a war axe sliced clean through its left eye. For a moment it stilled as if in shock, mouth wide open and tail thumping to the ground. One remaining eye focused on Tac, who seemed just as surprised that the dragon had stopped moving as the guards, Aela and Irileth.

"You," the dragon growled.

"Umm…" Tac quailed under the yellow eye as big as his fist. "I'm s—"

"Yeeeeeargh!" Zahra thrust her arm into the dragon's maw and her sword into the dragon's brain.

It screamed, a horrible grinding sound that made Aela's gut clench, and its head jerked back so fast Zahra was nearly pulled along by the grip she still had on her sword. Tac yelped, dropping his axes so he could hold on as the head arced up, up… and crashed to the ground, gone limp in death.

The ramshackle defense stood there for several seconds, simply staring at the fallen beast. The three remaining guardsmen, two at a distance with bows and one particularly brave one who stood peering over the dragon's flank from where he had been slashing at a leg, wore identical looks of relived astonishment; Irileth with sword at one hand and sparks still leaping from fingertip to fingertip, expression guarded; Aela with an arrow nocked ready to fire, as stranger things could happen than a dragon playing dead; Tac sliding gingerly off the dragon and crumpling to the ground holding his belly; and Zahra, who lay panting and trying to sit up with the use of only one arm. Her right arm, her sword-arm, was curled at her side, gouged deep from the dragon's teeth and gushing blood.

"All right," said Irileth finally. "Let's see if that— Everybody get back!"

For just then the dragon had begun to burn. It burned like parchment, scales disintegrating and sparks leaping into the air. Aela ran forward and grabbed Tac by one arm, dragging him away from the danger as the guardsmen and Irileth took cover. She was about to run back to try to save Zahra too when a great light burst from the dragon, radiating outward and blinding her momentarily. Instinctively she clapped a hand over her eyes, spots dancing across her vision, and braced herself, but nothing happened.

She chanced a look up to see swirls of light every color of the rainbow enveloping the dragon, until one by one the swirls shot towards where Zahra still lay and rushed around and  _into_  her. Zahra's head tilted up and her eyes and mouth opened wide as she absorbed the radiance, then as it faded she swayed and fell back, unconscious.

"What was that?" said Tac, still clutching the bloodstained leather over his belly, where the dragon's scales had dug into him. "Was that—" But whatever he had been going to say was cut off as something clicked in Aela's mind and she whispered reverently, "Dragonborn…"

" _Dragonborn_?" said a guard.

"Princess!" Tac cried, and scrambled across the rocks and debris to crouch next to Zahra. He felt clumsily for a pulse.

"I'm fine, Tac," Zahra croaked, swatting at his hand and reaching with her other arm — which, Aela noted as she and the other defenders gathered around, had healed with nary a scar — to push herself up. "Just a little— What in Oblivion  _was_  that?"

"Magic?" Tac offered.

One of the guards, a man Aela recognized from town but couldn't name in that moment, said in a half-indignant, half-awed voice, "Not just any magic. You're Dragonborn!"

"But Tolbod, how is that possible? I thought the Dragonborns died out with the Septim dynasty?" another guard said.

"I don't know how it happened, just that it  _has_. Didn't you see that? She absorbed the dragon's soul!" Tolbod shot back, glancing around as if wanting someone else to support his theory. Aela said nothing, thinking about what a Dragonborn rising could mean.

"Ugh." Zahra laid her head back down. "I think I'm going to be sick…"

Tac leaned over her curiously, reaching for her forehead. Suddenly Zahra shoved him away, back arching and mouth clamping shut. The force behind her lips was too great however, as they were wrenched open by the word that erupted from her. "FUS!" she Shouted into the air. Aela could have sworn (she did later) that she saw a wave of blue-tinted energy come out along with the sound. She shivered — this was the power of Dragonborns.

Zahra, for her part, looked stunned at her own ability. She flopped back down, looking about with the eyes of one wondering if she was hallucinating.

"The Thu'um…" Tolbod's naysayer whispered, "It is true…"

The guards burst into excited chatter, until Irileth interrupted them with her own skepticism.

"Enough," Zahra said quietly, hauling herself up with the help of Tac, who hovered over her until she shooed him away with a "I'm  _fine_." She stood, looking at each of them for a moment before saying, "I'm going back to Dragonsreach for now, let the Jarl know what happened. He might as well hear about — whatever this is — from whoever I supposedly am." She glanced at the dragon's carcass, a pile of bones now, and pursed her lips. "Tac, take whatever you want from the skeleton. I'll be up the road. I need to be alone for a minute." She extracted her sword from the dragon's maw and, slinging her bow on her back, began a slow trek towards Whiterun proper.


	12. By the Wayside

_Dragonborn. If that's not the strangest thing anyone has ever called me… Must be a fluke. Has to be. Oh Kynareth, what if it isn't? Does that mean dragons are well and truly back, and I'll have to kill them with my magic voice? I need to read up on this… Dragonborn business. Just another thing to add to the list,_ anisa _. Just more to do. I need to start recording in that journal again!_

Zahra trudged up the road to Whiterun in a haze. She could barely feel her own feet, so focused was she on her thoughts, and so she drifted along, like an automaton patrolling a Dwarven ruin long after it had no masters left to protect. She thought as much as she could, going in circles in her mind to avoid being left alone with the steady humming of— the dragon's  _soul_. If she kept herself distracted she could ignore the feeling of a foreign presence branded into her spirit, the incoherent rage and sadness pulsing from her defeated foe, even the burn in her throat from that word she had less spoken, more  _expelled_ , wanting to be released again. Knowledge, too, the abstract, detached idea that  _fus_  means  _force_ , and a glimpse into millennia of hiding, waiting, watching for my Lord's return—

_What is wrong with me?_

She shoved the dragon's presence into a cage, tossed aside the name-knowledge he left behind —  _Mirmulnir,_ that made it so much  _worse_  — and, by some Gods-given instinct, hoisted her own soul higher to smother the treacherous thoughts trickling in. To give that dragon a voice, even a name, was to give it power.

Her feet took her to the stables and past the caravan, where Ri'saad hailed her. She had only enough awareness to flop her hand uselessly by her side, but the savvy Khajiit let it go. She drifted across the drawbridge and into Whiterun proper — the guards recognized her, but, fearing the distant look on her face, did not dare stop her to ask for news.

It was as she passed through the market that a clap of thunder shook Whiterun, sending her stumbling and those around her looking about in panic.

_DOV-AH-KIIN…_

Her head spun and her vision blurred as she caught herself against Carlotta Valentia's stall, gasping for air. Something surged in her, then ebbed away, leaving her mind clear and, mercifully, the dragon mute. She righted herself, filled with a strange new sense of purpose, and looked around to find everyone staring at her. Hope, dread, confusion and reverence were in their eyes in equal amounts, but it was Jon Battle-Born pulling out his notebook, and starting to write while looking her over, that had her feet moving. She fled up to Dragonsreach, heart beating in her mouth.

The guards were staring now too: she could feel their eyes on her as she tried not to break into a run, as that would show fear. Instead she strode purposefully into the cool darkness of Dragonsreach. She didn't even pause at the entryway to let her eyes adjust, but stalked up to where it seemed the entirety of the Jarl's court, sans Irileth, waited for her.

A man she vaguely remembered was Balgruuf's younger brother stepped aside as she approached, the unrest — not quite  _worry_ , but closer to a battle-itch — on his face easing ever so slightly. His eyes flicked to her sword-arm, and she realized that while her flesh had healed by absorbing the soul, the tears in her armor and bracer remained. She scolded herself for not noticing earlier, adding another mental note to the many accruing in the past few hours alone.

The Jarl learned forward and said, "What happened? Was the dragon at the Watchtower?" His voice was filled with concern

Zahra took a deep breath and let it out through her bangs. "Yes. It is dead, though the fight was long and two of the guards did not survive." She didn't want to talk about  _that_ , and wouldn't if she could help it.

"Mmm. I will make sure they are remembered as heroes. But come now, I can tell there is more to the story."

_Dammit. The direct question._  Either he was more astute than she thought or she couldn't even omit information convincingly anymore. "Yes… When the dragon died I absorbed something from it. The guards were calling me Dragonborn."

"Dragonborn? What do you know about that?"

She bristled under his derisive tone, but wrestled her anger back and said carefully, "Not nearly as much as I would like, if I am being called such."

Balgruuf sat back, brow creasing. "It is true then. The Greybeards were summoning you."

"That was the Greybeards? That rumbling earlier?"

"Yes. They are masters of the Way of the Voice, after all. They can teach you how to use your gifts, if you really are Dragonborn." He grew distant, as if his mind was far away in space or time, and murmured, "The Seven Thousand Steps. To climb again… I made the pilgrimage once. I envy you to meet the Greybeards in person." He returned to Nirn when Proventus interrupted.

"Wait, wait. I don't see any evidence that Zahra is, what, 'Dragonborn.' What does this Nord nonsense have to do with her?"

Hrongar puffed himself up for rebuttal, but Zahra beat him to it. "FUS!" The Shout dissipated into the rafters, the cloud of dust dislodged in its wake drifting away. She tilted her head down again, raising an eyebrow at the stunned steward.

"Zahra, though I see your point I have to ask you not to do that again," the Jarl said uneasily but firmly. At her apologetic nod, he continued, "You'd better get up to High Hrothgar immediately. It is a tremendous honor to be summoned, and there is no refusing it. Although I wonder if the Greybeards are aware of anything else happening on this world besides the reappearance of the Dragonborn. Ah, no matter. Go and learn what they can teach you. And take these." He gestured to a guard, who handed him a pair of gauntlets. Or at least they looked like gauntlets, but made from beautiful blue and green material that reminded her of Elven pieces. They looked far too delicate to be armor, but when she accepted them it was to find that, although light, they were also sturdy and unyielding. The enchantment on them seemed very familiar.

"For your archery," Jarl Balgruuf said when she looked up, inquiring. "And for your service to my Hold."

She ran her hands over the smooth but cold, so very cold material before affixing the gauntlets to her arms, stuffing her old leather bracers into her pack for sale or later re-appropriation. Her eyes felt sharper, her hands steadier — it was a quality enchantment.

"Thank you, my Jarl," she murmured as she inclined her head.

"And," said Balgruuf, smiling gently, "by my right as Jarl—"

_Aw shit. Shitshitshitshitshit_. She knew exactly what he was doing and why.

"—I name you Thane of Whiterun. It's the greatest honor that's within my power to grant."

_Because you want to be in the new Dragonborn's good graces, right? I'm onto you._

"I assign you Lydia as a personal Housecarl, and this weapon from my armory to serve as your badge of office." He hefted a battleaxe bigger than she was.

She didn't take it. She stared up at the Jarl, face contorting from disbelief to bemusement to outrage to resignation within the span of seconds.  _He just had to offer it publicly…_  "Apologies, my Jarl, but I must refuse, at the very least on account of the housecarl. I don't— that is, I don't need one." She had very nearly said  _I don't have an authority complex,_ but restrained herself, hoping that the Jarl thought Thaneship was enough to secure her loyalty. Not that it  _was_ , but he needn't have bothered since she was already attached to Whiterun. And not just because it was effectively neutral, either. The clan sniping she could have done without, but it was better than the monopoly of Markarth by far.

"Will you at least take the title? It has benefits, as I'm sure you're aware."

"Very well," she said, taking the battleaxe and getting out of there as fast as the heavy weapon would allow.

~o~o~o~

She didn't really flee, at least not far enough to make the Jarl think she was fleeing, but ended up in Farengar's office. The wizard deserved a story of the battle, at the very least, after being left behind.

And if she got what she was seeking, then all the better. Alas, Tac wasn't here to ply him with bones and scales and whatever else the Imperial would have recovered from the dragon. That would have been a massive boon, and not anywhere near to bribery, nope.

Farengar looked up as she entered, chuckling as she dragged the battleaxe behind her. "I see you've gotten a title," he said, putting away the book he had been reading. Something about the Dragon Wars — she didn't even care at this point. When the Axe of Whiterun was carefully propped up against the desk, she stretched her arms until her back popped (Farengar flinched at the sound) and said, "Hello to you too. I suppose you're  _not_  wanting the tale, then?"

"What? Of course I do. What was it like? Did it breathe fire?"

"Incinerated a guardsman." Although she said it lightly, she wasn't really expecting the excitement on the Nord's face at her statement. "Stop smiling and I'll tell you everything."

So she did. She sank into a chair — how could she not — and relayed the whole bloody, dragon-filled story of the Battle for the Watchtower, although she cut off at the point where she left for Whiterun. Even she wasn't ready to face the fact that the dragon had a name, and the thing  _lived inside her_ now, whispering strange thoughts. Thoughts her mortal mind didn't understand.

"I left Tac at the Watchtower to see if he could scavenge anything off the dragon. I walked back here, heard what sounded like thunder and gibberish at the time, and reported in to your boss. He sends me off to talk to the Greybeards, and gives me a title, an axe, and these." She indicated the gauntlets. "Which are the only one among them I will ever use. Tried to give me a housecarl, too. I had to decline — imagine that poor Lydia being my housecarl. I've been in a similar position for fatcat nobles in Cyrodiil, and while she probably won't see it that way, I'd rather not develop into anything like those idiots. And worse for her, she'd have to deal with me running all over Skyrim for bounties, with no actual fighting involved. Or at least not the kind that's anything more than spotting a wolf a mile away, sticking it through the neck with an arrow, and moving on."

"Or running straight for it screaming murder," came a voice from behind her.

Zahra knew better than to be surprised. "Hey Tac. Where have you been? How long have you been listening?" She turned her head, not enough so she could see him, but to make it clear she was paying attention.

The Imperial stepped up to the back of her chair, leaning over her and peering down as she tilted her head back."At the Temple getting patched up." Zahra mentally slapped herself — of course he had been injured! Before she could say anything he winked at her and continued, "and since the part you conveniently left out."

_Stop! Poker face_. "What part?"

"Oh, where I apologized to the dragon for gutting its eyeball." He smirked at her.  _Bastard_.

"Ah yes. That was embarrassing. So what did you find? Anything for Farengar here?"

Both men perked up. "Yessiree, couple bones and a scale," Tac said, digging around in his pack. He pulled out a large bone with a very familiar-looking yellow tunic caught in it, setting it down on the table before going after the other items.

"Tac, is that a Whiterun guard's uniform?" Farengar stared at the fabric as if it would contaminate his workspace with uncounted diseases. Zahra had more pressing issues. She thought for a horrifying second that Tac had pilfered it from a body to sell for profit.

"Yep, got it from the dragon. Thought I'd turn it in to the Jarl or the guard captain, see that it goes to the family of the poor sod."

Zahra sighed with relief. "Tac, you never fail to surprise me. Usually not in a good way, but here we are."

"Aww, darlin' you're the sweetest thing." Tac batted his eyelashes, a truly disturbing sight, and stuffed the uniform into his pack again.

Farengar was salivating over the largest bone now that it was no longer draped in a bloody rag, turning it over and over in his hands, peering down the length, poking at it with his blunt nails, and cooing all the while. Zahra had to clear her throat several times to even get a glance from him, so enamored was he. It would have been endearing if it wasn't a  _dragon bone_.

"Hey, Farengar, I'm curious. Who was that woman who was here when we dropped off the Dragonstone?" Zahra asked, trying to sound casual.

That got the wizard away from his new obsession. He stared at her, all traces of excitement gone. "An associate of mine."

"I know that. I'm wondering what she  _does_. Is she an adventurer? She looked familiar, I think I've met her before on a job or something."  _Technically true, I did meet her while we were at the inn in Riverwood…_

"It's certainly possible. She does a lot of work, most of which she doesn't fill me in on."

It seemed she wasn't going to get anything, which was a shame since she had a bad feeling about this woman who called herself Delphine. "Oh, okay. I suppose if she's that busy we'll probably meet again. Did you want the bones and scale?"

They worked out a deal — or rather, Farengar shoved money at her until she got over her shock and accepted. Zahra checked his wares for any Adept or better Robes of Conjuration, intending to give them to Caïn to use until they could find an enchanter good enough to recreate his custom robes taken by the Legion, but found nothing suitable. Tac wandered off at some point, as likely to report to the Jarl as to harass the man's bratty children. Possibly both, while swiping some silverware. She made a mental note to check his bag for pilfered goods before they left; wouldn't be good for the court's newest Thane to be caught associating with a kleptomaniac, even if it was just sweetrolls and spoons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Anisa" = borrowed from an Arabic name meaning "intimate friend; woman" and used in this context to be Zahra's term of endearment for herself. "Pull yourself together, _woman!_ " — like that.
> 
> For the record, I love Balgruuf, and I don't think Zahra would be so hasty if she weren't feeling so weird here.


	13. Where There's a Will...

"But I have so much space left over from selling off that loot!" Tac whined, holding open his pack just to show how empty it was. Indeed, the only things he had left were the iron helmet for Maea — Zahra personally thought the manmer would look ridiculous in the thing, but enchantment was enchantment and she  _could_  just lock herself in her room with the alchemy table if she was worried about her reputation as a "forever fashionable lady" — two potions of questionable nature from the barrow, a new necklace to resist magic that had cut their final profit in half, and the three hundred septims Zahra had let him keep from the selling spree. A Tac with too much money was even worse than a Tac with none at all.

She, meanwhile, was still lugging around that battleaxe...

She'd put it on the rack in Hragyeva. János could use it if he so pleased, but at least it wouldn't get back to the Jarl that she had been so bold as sell her symbol of office. "Be careful saying that around Caïn — you know he'll stuff everything in  _your_  pack the next time you two go out on a bounty together."

"I wish he'd stuff something else—"

"Quiet. You know you'll make me jealous. It's bad already that János got to you first," she said, summoning all of the feelings she'd pushed to the back of her mind to the forefront, reminding herself that yes, she did care more than she let on. Not enough to attempt to break them up — though she thought Tac might actually go along if she was forceful — because they made each other more agreeable than usual. And a sated Tac was a breeze compared to the alternative.

In the end, relative harmony won out over twinges of jealousy. She had to make sacrifices, dammit. While keeping the line firmly on not making Caïn homicidal. Which meant…

"You be careful now. He doesn't like you teasing him like that. I'm inclined to kick your ass if you harass him any more."

He actually managed to look abashed.  _A new feat!_  "All right, all right. Message received, darlin' dear."

Hragyeva Hall came into view in the valley below, the gradually lengthening shadows softening the harshness of its rundown appearance. It was early evening, and it would be some time before the sun actually set, but in late Last Seed it was already dropping lower and lower on its arc, and would do so every day until one day in early Evening Star it would appear and immediately dip back down, not to be seen again for a month. This phenomenon drove many people who came to Skyrim mad, she'd heard — Sunstarving, the Nords called it.

Zahra shivered. She'd already survived one winter, and hopefully this next one wouldn't be as difficult as the first. She and the others had spent that entire bitter season holed up in Whiterun, making each other miserable and eating increasingly awful inn food. The bard — she didn't care to remember his name — had constantly harassed Zahra and Maea with impromptu odes and gifts. (Irén was spared most of this — she had punched him in the face at the first declaration of love and he learned quickly to lay low when she was around.) That was one of the reasons she had petitioned the Jarl for permission to re-appropriate Halted Stream Camp the following spring.

And right now it looked like the work wouldn't be finished in time for the snows, if this Dragonborn… thing… took over. She still didn't know what to think. Brigands she could handle, but dragons?

She pushed open the outer gate and stepped into the yard, checking about for anything amiss.  _Notes on Racial Phylogeny and Biology_  had been knocked to the ground, but otherwise everything was in order. She rescued the book and shook out the dirt before returning it to the chair and pushing open the front door to her home.

Immediately the smell of grilled salmon hit her nose.  _Ah_ … She stopped to marvel how she had gotten such a good cook in János, a man who looked meat-and-mead but was actually a massive fan of the Gourmet, and thank Zenithar for her good fortune.  _Dinner_. She was suddenly aware of her empty stomach and a craving for a hearty meal followed by a nice long sleep.

Tac squeezed by her and disappeared into the kitchen, doubtlessly to sit on the preparation table, legs swinging, and chatter without end in János' general direction. Perhaps about his day — and Zahra didn't want her most reliable group member learning about the Dragonborn Business secondhand, no matter how much she was dreading such a revelation.

"Ján, dear? Got a minute?" she called as she sank down into the head chair at the table. She bit back the sigh of relief. Her feet felt like they had been a troll's chew toys, and the hard-backed  _thing_  — it could hardly be called a chair — in Farengar's office was nothing compared to the cushioned item in Hragyeva Hall. (She had gotten it from a bandit stronghold, strangely enough, and it was just about the only thing worth taking from that whole bounty.)

"Of course, Zahra," János called. A moment later he trotted in, Tac dragging his feet behind.

"If this is about—"

"Hush, Tac," she snapped. "We're waiting until everyone is here—" she choked, remembering that no, not everyone was there or could be there, but continued bravely, "—before we talk about that."

Tac pouted, but János' interest was piqued. "What's going on? Do you want me to grab the twins?" He was eying her suspiciously.

"We're here, don't worry," came Côme's soft voice from the stairs before the man himself came down, followed by his brother. Caïn, too, looked wary, but Côme's face was carefully blank with a trace of polite interest.

She looked around at what remained of her team —  _where in Oblivion are Maea and Briarlin? Wouldn't they have given up by now?_  — and reached out to pat János' hand, more to remind herself that someone was left than to comfort  _him_. Like he ever needed comforting. He was the rock all of them clung to.

"Something's happened. I'm still not sure quite what, but when Tac and I were in Bleak Falls Barrow getting the Dragonstone," she nodded to Caïn, "there was a standing wall there radiating some kind of magic. I tried to resist it, but it had me in some kind of trance and— it's hard to describe, but I learned something there. Absorbed power."

János brow knit tight when she mentioned the wall, and he started tapping his fingers against his chin.

"We found the Dragonstone and got out of there. When we were returning it to the court wizard at Dragonsreach, the Jarl's housecarl burst in, shouting about a dragon attacking the Western Watchtower. Somehow we got roped into fighting it."

"Although no one thought to give me a bow, I was stuck with just my axes…" Tac grumbled under his breath. The other three men shushed him.

"So we ran out there, fought the dragon, and managed to kill it—"

"Princess stabbed it through the mouth," Tac supplied cheerfully. "Ripped up her arm something fierce."

Three pairs of eyes snapped to her right arm, where the sleeve of her armor was teeth-torn but the flesh smooth as her nameday, then up to stare skeptically at Tac.

"—but then the dragon started glowing and burning, and I couldn't see anything because this rainbow light shot out and came straight at me. I must have fainted because the next thing I knew I was on the ground, the dragon was just a skeleton, and the guards were calling me Dragonborn."

János groaned and slammed his head on the table. "Oh no…"

Caïn recoiled, startled. "Dragonborn? What on Nirn is that?" He glanced over at János. "Is it a bad thing?"

Côme  _tsked_. "Brother, haven't you studied anything of the local Nord legends? The Dragonborn is a mortal with a dragon's soul, the only one capable of killing them permanently and learning Shouts without extensive training. The Septim emperors were all Dragonborn, though there weren't any dragons back then. The question is, if a new Dragonborn has appeared, does this mean the dragons are back too?" He directed this question at Zahra.

She threw her hands up. "I don't know! I don't want to have to kill dragons! I don't want to be some big hero!"

"Not only that," said János, lifting his head and fixing her with an inscrutable look. "The civil war, too. Both General Tullius and Jarl Ulfric will be clamoring for you to join their cause. It may become dangerous to visit Solitude and Windhelm once your identity gets out."

"Oh Kynareth, I didn't think of that. I need time to digest this. Did… did you three hear the thundering noise a few hours ago?" Nods and grimaces. "That was the Greybeards, calling me to the Throat of the World and High Hrothgar. Jarl Balgruuf said I needed to go up there and discover my destiny or some such."

"Oh, a quest!" Tac giggled and winked around the table.

"He also wanted to Thane me. Complete with housecarl, how foolish." No, she had  _not_  gotten over that.

There were murmurs of agreement and a muttered "Thank Talos you think so," from János.

"Unfortunately, I had to accept the title itself. The Jarl wouldn't let it go."

"Well, yeah," János said. "Having a legend — apparently — for a Thane is a good thing, especially if Ulfric attacks Whiterun. You do realize you are now obligated to defend the city in that event?" He raised his eyebrow. He was well aware of her political inclination — or lack thereof — and doubtlessly his mind was already running through all the different scenarios and best response for each one. Non-confrontational to the point of stupidity on occasion, but he was a strategist to the core.

Zahra massaged her temples; it was a futile action this time, but one born of habit. "Ugh, yes. I do. Please, I'm hungry and tired and I really do need time to digest all this."

~o~o~o~

Later that evening, Zahra was feeling much better. After a meal and a long talk with János — in which she unloaded all her fears onto the man — she found she could delay her rest until she had watched the sun set. She climbed up to the west-facing wall with little difficulty and sat there, breathing in the cooling fresh air.

Zahra sighed; she finally had a home and she couldn't even enjoy it. It wasn't the mansion she was promised at one point in her life — an Era away as far as she was concerned — but it was the first place she could truly call her own, within Skyrim or without. She had run the spectrum of inns — from a corsair-sacked and fire-ravaged deathtrap in Wayrest to the Tiber Septim Hotel in the Imperial City (although she had heard the Hotel was even grander before the War) — camped in jungles and on steppes, and stolen naps on the beds of slaughtered bandit leaders, but not since her childhood had she had a  _house_. Comfort. Stability. Her friends surrounding her. Family, some day. It meant more to her than she would ever admit out loud.

She still had to figure out what to do about that rotting mammoth though.

Later. It was  _always_  later. Would she ever have a chance to breathe?

She heard Tac — it could only be Tac — open and shut the front door. She didn't hear so much as feel him picking his way through the yard to stand behind her.

She ran her hand through her fringe, letting out a huff. Her breath —  _my life_ , she thought — floated away on Skyrim's cold winds. As the sun brushed the horizon, alighting the untouchable clouds in pinks and purples and oranges, Tac slipped his arm across her shoulders and pulled her into his warmth, pressing his lips to her hair and humming a one-note tune until she couldn't hold back the smile anymore.


	14. The Proverbial Molehill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is fairly short compared to the last few. I wondered for a while about padding it, but there is the quantity / quality correlation to consider... Ack.

Zahra was sipping jazbay tea — it was more commonly used for wine, but also made a fine brew — and internally bemoaning the lack of coffee of any kind in Skyrim, when János burst in the front door. He was sweaty from the forge and he still held an iron dagger (Zahra knew his skill extended far beyond this, but iron was what he made when he wanted to beat Oblivion out of something) clenched in his hand. "They're coming! Maea and Briarlin are almost here — just saw the signal on the south road."

The pair's signal, being a fire arrow shot into the air followed by an ice spike, was one Zahra had heard the others (including Irén, as this was before her disappearance) discussing late in the "Bannered Mare Months" when they were all desperate for something to focus on and anxious to be out of inn living. She hadn't thought anyone would actually use their agreed-upon signal. Or that János would remember the specifics.

"Are you sure it's them?" She set her tea down on the table, then, thinking better of it, picked it back up and took a gulp. The tart drink burned on the way down, but at least she felt a little calmer. That had been a good thing a mere two hours previously, when János had taught her about her new status in Nord culture.  _Goodness, the hero worship…_

"Fairly sure. Who wastes flaming arrows by shooting them straight up? Could start a tundra fire. Speaking of which…" He ducked outside.

Zahra stood and, clutching her teacup, followed him.

The fresh air, nippy already with the promise of winter, made her shiver and wish she had grabbed her shawl. In Skyrim, autumn and spring were so short as to be nonexistent, so she hardly had a chance to wear anything but thick fur-lined armor to fight the cold, or light leather for the glorious "gadfly-lived" summers. A shame — she liked that shawl.

Two dark figures slowly approached from the south, on the worn path between the hills. With a bit of squinting Zahra could tell one was a great deal shorter than the other. Many more seconds dragged by before she could make out their clothes, and minutes before they got close enough for Zahra to feel comfortable waving at them. Briarlin half-heartedly waved back — well, it was more like a flop of the hand — but Maea scowled and limped faster.

That was when Zahra saw they were both covered in mud splatters and had red splotches on their skin.

"What the fuck happened to you?" János said as he shoved open the gate for them.

"Do not even—!" Maea cut herself off to scratch furiously at one of the many bites on her arms. That was what they were, of course — bites. Dozens of insect bites, inflamed and swollen. One, along Briarlin's jaw, was three inches in diameter, and apparently the Bosmer was having an allergic reaction for one eye was practically crusted shut. The other, bloodshot, went in and out of focus even as she looked at him.

"Oh," was all she could say for a few seconds. Then, mercifully, her instincts kicked in and she ushered them inside, yelling for Caïn.

~o~o~o~

Maea and Briarlin awoke, within minutes of each other, late that evening. Late enough to delay travel to High Hrothgar until the morning, but having seen their state Zahra was glad to have stayed. She'd been able to get some things done in the meantime, like an inventory of her traveling gear and a trip back into town for supplies. She'd had to slip into Belethor's just as it was closing, to avoid the stares, but she was as ready as she'd ever be now. Unless someone invented an arrow that could kill a dragon in one hit.

Even sitting around the table after a 12-hour uninterrupted sleep, the new arrivals looked like they would fall over and never get up. Maea, in particular, was a vision slathered in the cream she'd made for insect bites and minor wounds — Zahra would have chuckled if she wasn't so wound up with curiosity.  _What on Nirn have they been up to?_

"Maea, is this the right one?" Côme poked his head around the door to the alchemy lab, holding a vial with a green liquid inside.

"Gods, yes, give it here." Maea snatched it up. "The miracle coffee substitute. Briarlin, you should have bought all the beans in Cyrodiil before we crossed the passes, you know that?"

Briarlin nodded tiredly – he had been given that lecture dozens of times – folded his arms on the table and put his head down.

Maea slapped his ear, drawing a strangled noise from the Bosmer's throat. "Don't fall asleep! Here, you can have some of this. Tastes awful, though."

When Maea's eyes were bright as a squirrel's and Briarlin's face was no longer an interesting shade of algae-green, Zahra figured it was time to break the news. "Okay," she began, "there's a long version and a short version of this story. Which–"

"Short first, then long if I need more information," Maea said. Zahra supposed she shouldn't have expected anything less from the pushy manmer woman.

Briarlin shrugged.

Zahra sighed. "Fine. I'm supposedly a hero chosen by Akatosh to slay dragons."  _It really does sound ridiculous…_

"That is… What? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!" Maea was eying her now, probably wondering whether the coffee substitute was spoiled and she had just been dumped into some kind of Skooma trip.

Briarlin, for his part, just looked confused. Probably was prepared to believe her, bless him.

"I thought so too. But I can use the Voice and everything. Or, at least part of the Voice. It's dangerous to use in here, but when you're feeling up to it–"

"Now," Maea snapped.

 _Oh yes, her perfect little world is disrupted. What about me having to deal with this? It's not like I wanted it._  But Zahra got up and led them outside to the encroaching dusk, where she took a breath and Shouted to the evening sky. The Word seemed to fly past her lips easier each time; she wondered if her mind would ever get used to having such power even as her body did. It scared her.

"Ah." Maea was staring at the spot where the wave had dissipated, fear in her ice-blue eyes. She glanced at Zahra, then back. "Was that the… the Voice?"

Zahra shook her head. She didn't want to believe it herself. "János seemed to think so. And I'd consider him as close to knowledgeable on the subject of ancient Nord heroes as any of us can get. So unless this is a rather elaborate joke on the part of some Daedra or other, I can't come to any other conclusion than that I actually am Dragonborn. Born to kill dragons."

" _You_? But why—"

Briarlin nudged her just enough to make her cut off. Before she could start talking again, he made a cutting motion —  _stop_  — and then a few other furious, excited gestures.  _You, I, heard. Water. Tree. Speak._  His manner of communication took getting used to, which was why he rarely used it in front of strangers, but Zahra pieced the translation together easily enough. They had heard something in Riverwood. Gossip?

"Oh!" Maea said. "Yes, I remember. An old woman in Riverwood was raving while we were there — something about dragons returning and the 'hero born to eat the World-Eater' as she put it. Thought she was nuts, to be honest. But… Helgen was a smoking husk when we passed through. Dead bodies everywhere. Was that really…?"

"Come inside," Zahra said, and so the tales were exchanged.

~o~o~o~

"I'm heading for the Throat of the World tomorrow. The Greybeards summoned me, János and the Jarl both said I must answer," Zahra said, talking more to her newly-filled tea cup than her friends and allies around her. She could hear the wooden tone to her voice; it made her flinch, and eyebrows furrow around the table, but mercifully no one mentioned it. The realization was just sinking in — her life would never be the same — and she supposed, in a detached way, that she was in a depression. Which was why she didn't want to travel alone.

Everyone had been brought up to date, including the story of the strange encounter with the would-be High King and Ralof, both of whom Tac and Caïn remembered from Helgen, and later encounter with no less than four Spriggans (hence the bites). Maea had also slapped Caïn (twice) for 'making' her go out and patrol the border. The cousins' relationship was  _almost_  as dysfunctional as her own estrangement from her remaining family, Zahra thought. Briarlin was rolling his eyes the whole time behind Maea's back.

Speaking of the manmer, she eyed Zahra for possibly the fifth time in as many hours. "It's a trap."

"Of  _course_  it's a trap—" Caïn. She was going to  _strangle_  him, the paranoid bastard.

János had gone still, mouth twitching, and Zahra feared a shouting match even as she wondered what, specifically, was bothering the normally unflappable man. Côme came to her rescue, cuffing his brother with one hand and patting the Nord's shoulder with the other. Caïn shot him an offended look, rubbing his face and mumbling something that she — luckily for him, probably — did not catch.

 _Bless the sane, Zenithar,_  she prayed as her eyes rolled skyward again. She mustered her best authoritative-command voice. "It is not a trap, both of you shut up. I am leaving first thing tomorrow, no arguing. And János is going with me." The Nord started, blinking. "It is a long trek around the Throat, and I don't know how long I'll be gone. Keep busy and off each other's throats. Côme, I'm putting you in charge of job distribution and such. Even if there aren't any bounties here, head down to Falkreath and check. Keep your eyes open for dragons everywhere you go." If it was true that she was supposed to kill dragons, she might need to respond to sightings. "I will expect a status report when I get back."

"Of course, Zahra," Côme murmured, pink touching his cheeks.

"Good. Don't worry too much about it, you'll do fine. János, be sure to pack tonight, we won't have time come morning."

"Yeah, love. Can do." And with that Zahra rose from the table, stretching her aching muscles. She wasn't looking forward to this, but duty, no,  _destiny_  called, and she wouldn't be running away again. Not with a burning Tamriel and the World-Eater himself waiting for her if she failed. She liked existence too much to let that happen — if she could help it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those wondering, János is the kind of Nord who would make the connection between dragons returning and Alduin almost immediately, so he has brought Zahra up to date what he knows of the lore.


	15. Speak Softly (and Carry a Big Stick)

Jarl Balgruuf was at least right on one thing. High Hrothgar was indeed a peaceful place... if _cold_. Though she wore layers of animal skins, the chill seeped into her bones, and she rose every morning for meditation and training with increasing reluctance. The bed she had been given, stone though it was, was piled high with furs; furs that could not compare to the desert, of course, but kept her relatively comfortable. She could not rest overlong, though; the Greybeards and her pride would not allow it. So she dragged herself away, forced herself to confront the cold.

The ancient fortress held no warmth within or without: physically, socially, or spiritually. Everything was unyielding gray, for one — even the elder's skin, making her wonder if she would turn so bleak if she stayed too long. The Greybeards were kind to her, smiling gently as they taught her to master her Voice and helping her up every time she fell after using Whirlwind Sprint, but she was always hyper-aware that she was a student to them, one to be guided. Likewise the meditations felt cold: she could not feel Kynareth's presence with her as she knelt; could not sense her Goddess' hand like in the temples of the world below. She felt nothing, nothing _ness_. Thus, Master Arngeir's praise and astonishment at her quick mastery of every exercise he threw at her could not drive off the soul-deep weariness that was one and a half weeks on the Throat of the World.

Nevertheless, she did find some comfort in the fact that Arngeir was not expecting her to become a monk herself, or even really follow the Way of the Voice. "Akatosh's gift was given to you for a reason, my child," he had said the very afternoon she had stumbled in the great double doors, bruised and smarting from a scrape with a frost troll. "The Voice was given to you, Zahra. I suggest you meditate on that fact. We may not be able to see your destiny, but the return of the dragons is undoubtedly connected, intertwined even, with your Way." And she had meditated. At first she was annoyed at Arngeir's inability to give her a straight answer, but soon she came to realize it, in bits and pieces of insight, on her own: she was essentially a hired killer. Akatosh had chosen her despite her violent job… or perhaps because of it.

János was allowed to shelter in the monastery on the condition that he not get in the way. He seemed to take this to heart and often Zahra didn't even see him until dinnertime, during which he was quiet and unobtrusive. She had no idea what he did while she was off sprinting around the courtyard (and falling on her face in the snow), knocking down projected Greybeard clones, or meditating more than she had thought even humanly possible (perhaps for elves, but mer were typically more spiritually aware anyway), and she was hardly given a chance to talk to him. She was ashamed of it, but it came to be that he was far from her mind most of the time.

On the day before she was to be given her last test — which no one would tell her about, even Arngeir who alone could speak without bringing down the mountain — she was wandering around trying to find a spot where she could feel some sun on her face while she meditated. She was padding down the eastern hall, mat under one arm, growing ever more frustrated that she couldn't get even this _one little wish_ , when János emerged from a recess in front of her.

Zahra stopped short and instinctively quieted her breathing — he hadn't seen her yet. _Must be distracted_ , she thought as he turned to wander down to the end of the hall. He stood looking out one of the tall, narrow windows for many minutes, while Zahra watched him, before she realized how ridiculous the whole situation was. She cleared her throat.

He jumped and reached for a dagger that wasn't there — she had been allowed to keep her bow strapped to her back, but János, as a guest, was not allowed his weapons on his person — a spooked look on his face behind the untrimmed beard.

"It's me, Ján," she said quickly. When he had relaxed, although she noted with dismay that the shadow never left his eyes, she came closer and remarked, "I'm supposed to be meditating, but I've done so much of that recently I feel a bit sick of it, to be honest. How are you? I haven't hardly seen you at all! Sorry about that, by the way."

"Oh, it's fine. I've been reading, mostly. Did you know there's a library?"

"Really? No, I didn't have a clue. Can you show me? I think I can get away with shirking this for now." She hefted the mat, then dropped it on a bench.

He led her down to a small, windowless room next to the council hall. It had a door on, unlike every other room in High Hrothgar, and she thought it was no wonder she hadn't noticed it before: it was the same color as the stone walls to either side. Indeed, it was a library: scrolls lined most of the shelves, and a quick peek at one revealed it was a record written by a previous Greybeard — dated two years before the Oblivion Crisis! — so she left them alone. In the far corner stood a single shelf of actual books. All of them were historic or religious in nature; there were all four books of _A Brief History of the Empire_ , two copies of _Spirit of Nirn_ , a well-worn _Children of the Sky_ , and, lying on a chair as if it had been read recently, one she hadn't seen before. Its bindings and cover were black as pitch and the diamond-shaped dragon of the Empire stood in silver relief on the front. Curious, she bent down and examined the book further. There was no title on the side — strange — so she cracked open to the first page.

And nearly dropped it. _The Book of the Dragonborn_ , it was titled. Curious but trepidatious nonetheless, she flipped it open and scanned through the pages, stopping when she reached a section that looked like a poem. She couldn't understand most of what it was referring to, until she read the part that made the chill of the monastery's stone walls seem positively torrid. _When the Snow Tower lies sundered, kingless, bleeding… The World-Eater wakes, and the Wheel turns upon the Last Dragonborn._

The Snow Tower… Skyrim? _Kingless_ and _bleeding_ would refer to the Rebellion then. _Oh Divines and Daedra._ The World-Eater. She had definitely heard of _him_. A shiver ran down her spine, her throat starting to itch as the Thu'um inexplicably built up inside her. She tried to fight it back, swallow it down, but it was no use — so she whirled around and, waving frantically at János to _move_ , let the safest Word of Power she knew erupt from her mouth.

"WULD!"

The walls became a blur as she shot forward like an arrow from her own bow. She jerked to a stop inches from smacking into the wall and let her trembling knees fold under her. She collapsed to the stone, unaware of anything but the phantoms of a dragon's roar in her ears, Mirmulnir's fire consuming her, and the gut-turning stench of the roasted guards from Whiterun. The dragon was roaring in her soul, shaking the binds she'd placed around him what felt like an Era ago. Oh Kynareth, she couldn't _do this_.

Gradually the ghosts of the Watchtower faded, and she became aware of someone large and blessedly warm holding her shaking body. János. _János_. Thank the Nine. He didn't have to say anything, just held her as her violent wracks became trembling, and finally she was able to quiet. Still out of breath and with tears trickling down her cheeks, she whispered, "thank you."

"Any time, Zahra. We'll get through this, love," he said gruffly and, in a rare display of affection, tucked a curl behind her ear before easing away and standing up. "It was the prophecy, I know. I read it the other day, and thought it was awfully ironic that the same guy who completed the requirements for the dragons returning was saved by one. I doubt he knew the ramifications of what he was doing, but still. The bastard."

She choked out a laugh. The Imperial Legion may have thought Ulfric Stormcloak was some kind of dragon-tamer, but she wondered how they would react to knowing that it was halfway true. It was ironic, so terribly tragically ironic.

~o~o~o~

"Zahra. As your final test, you are to retrieve the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller, our founder. His tomb is Ustengrav, northeast of Morthal. Here, let me mark it on your map." Arngeir took the precious piece of paper gently, handling it as if it were a terribly important document, which Zahra was absurdly grateful for. He marked a dot in the swampland, not far from the coast. She took the map back and folded it carefully in an oilcloth to protect it from the weather, then stuck it in her pack. "Go with the Way, and you will prevail. Sky above, Voice within, child."

"Sky above, Voice within, Master," she said respectfully.

The four Greybeards, Zahra, and János were gathered in the hall of High Hrothgar. It was the final day of their respite on the mountain, and soon she would have to make the trek down to Ivarstead, around the Throat, and back to Hragyeva Hall before — apparently — heading to Morthal and Ustengrav. She wasn't sure if she had done everything she could to prepare, but she could at least Whirlwind Sprint without falling over as soon as she stopped now. Northing more for it. She was not made for this kind of detached existence, and surely she would feel better once she was back amongst the world of normal people. Not that she thought she was normal, no, not anymore.

János bowed low to the Greybeards. "Masters, I am honored to have been allowed to stay here. Thank you for your hospitality." Straightening, he turned back to Zahra. He had trimmed his beard and looked much better than the day before. The shadows that had haunted him appeared to be gone. Perhaps it was that, because he was leaving, he was allowed to have his battleaxe back.

She smiled at the thought. She wouldn't feel very comfortable without her bow, either. "One last question, Master Arngeir," she said quickly, before her resolve could fail her. "What do you know of the Dragonborn Prophecy? I found this book—"

TThe Greybeard held up a hand. "Ah, that. Well, the Prophecy itself refers to events leading up to the Last Dragonborn's coming, and the coming of Alduin, the World-Eater of Nord legend. With some knowledge of history, I think the first four lines reference heroes of the past Era. Not all of them are famous — for example, few remember the Agent who was at least partially responsible for the Warp in the West — but all of them were great in their time. Of course, I cannot be certain, but it seems likely that the adventures of these past Heroes have been leading up to you, the Last Dragonborn. The fifth line appears to be about the current Civil War, which I must of course advise you not to get involved in." His tone hardened, then turned weary. "As for the World-Eater… well, I do not know. Perhaps when you gain the knowledge necessary to speak to our leader, Paarthurnax, you can ask him what Alduin's involvement is."

Again, she got the prickly feeling that he was not saying everything, but she had to let it go. The Nord elders had been so kind to her. Even if she hadn't gotten to ask her other question — what she could do about Mirmulnir and his rage — she supposed that they wouldn't know much about it. Arngeir had said the Greybeards hadn't hosted a Dragonborn in centuries.

However, she would get answers eventually. She was sure of it. She would _make_ sure of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Ulfy. He must be sneezing like crazy in Skyrimland right now. (Still, if people cared too much about my blatant disillusionment I doubt they'd have read past Interlude I...) Zahra's committed to neutrality, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have opinions. The only reason I haven't harped on the Empire is because Zahra hasn't had much to do with them so far. I'm debating whether to make that line in "Where There's a Will..." foreshadowing or not. (It wouldn't be til Book IV, but...) Either way, she is a Hammerfell native and has plenty to say about the Empire too, at the latest in early Book III, but more likely beginning in mid-Book II. Which is not that far away!


	16. Catch Your Breath

Zahra and János returned home to the Hall some three days later ready for some rest from the road, but Zahra found it hard to relax with the dragon soul inside her. Mirmulnir grew bolder: he whispered to her at night and in the pauses of the day, promising that her soul would be devoured by his Lord, that all things must be. If she listened, she could hear him laughing still, even as he fed her Thu'um-knowledge. Was this the curse of the Dragonborn? To be driven mad by the souls of the dragons she slew? By treacherous thoughts not her own?

She needed help, it dawned on her a mid-Hearthfire afternoon as she perched on the roof, staring at the Throat of the World rising in the distance.

Tac was gone, having wandered off with bounty in hand while she was at the monastery, and had only sent a cryptic note four days later: he was off to Solitude to "get the voice out of his head," whatever that meant. Caïn sneered and muttered that he would find good company in the man rumored to be wandering around the entrance to the Bard's College, which wrenched a laugh out of Maea. János was being stubborn, refusing to admit that he was worried too. Côme went upstairs to chew his nails down to the quick, and stayed there. Briarlin was a good listener, but singularly terrible at giving advice.

Shoot. She needed to help _herself_.

So she went hunting. Taking her bow and leaving no note, she left to find something akin to peace. She disappeared into the wilderness, became one with the shadows on the plain, stalking elk and wolf and prowling the nearby bandit strongholds just to feel normal again. Like her old self, before the dragons. And, for once, she did not allow worry in her breast for anyone but herself. It felt good, she thought. She fed herself on the flesh of her prey, stole a couple sessions with the cooking pot at the smugglers den nestled in the shadow of Dragonsreach, letting her hair grow wild and her feet wander ever farther from base, from civilization. She avoided the roads, shied away from any contact but that of her foes, and ran the hidden pine trails of the mountains separating Whiterun, The Pale, and Hjaalmarch.

That was how she stumbled across the dragon.

First she heard the roar, a primal sound that shook her very bones. She skidded to a stop mid-sprint and dropped to a crouch, moving off the trail to shelter under the boughs of a fir tree. It would surprise her, later, that she had such a quick reaction for only her second dragon encounter; but at the time she could only think of Mirmulnir, who had perked up. _Fire fire burning death fire…_

Second, she saw him, circling overhead. Through the needles which she hoped hid her, he looked about the same size as Mirmulnir, brown with long curling horns and leather-like wings. He had seen her. Or smelled her — did dragons have good senses of smell? The foreign soul within her would not answer — or perhaps heard her. Whatever it was, he stayed circling overhead, silent but for the beats of his wings. Waiting to flush her out.

Well, she could play this game—

The dragon wheeled around to hover in the air and drew in a deep breath. She realized what he was going to do mere seconds before the fire came bursting from his maw. She dove away from her tree and rolled, feeling the flames licking after her when the dragon spotted her, and ended up in a clearing where the snow piled high. She cursed and drew her bow. The dragon laughed deep, soaring higher and circling behind his would-be prey. Zahra tracked him with the tip of her nocked arrow, letting it fly when she was certain of his path. It pierced a wing, drawing out a roar, and arced into the distance. Lost to her.

The monster folded his wings and dove to the ground, landing so hard right in front of her that she fell to her knees, head spinning. Mirmulnir laughed within her. The other dragon crawled to her, maw gaping in a smile which was all teeth and cruelty. " _Joor, amativ wah yol!_ " he roared as she stumbled back to her feet, nocking another arrow. It flew right into his snout.

Behind her, the pines were burning. Smoke filled the air as dragon and Redguard stared at each other.

He launched into the air again. She didn't even think, but ran after him, firing arrow after arrow at his wings as she climbed up the steep trail. Several of them hit, by some Divine's intervention; he dropped out of the sky, wings shredded. A wound was left in the earth in his wake as he skid to a stop on the mountain. Zahra sheathed her bow and drew her sword, panting hard but determined to finish what she started.

"Come, _brit briiinah_ , let us see who is stronger," the dragon said. She would realize later that he was not taunting her, and in fact had accepted his death, but at the time she thought she heard a sneer in his rumbling voice. How could she know then that he had called her 'beautiful sister'?

"Yes, let's," she shot back, creeping forward and to the left with her sword tip pointed unwaveringly at the dragon's head. He watched her, unblinking. She shivered and averted her gaze to his mouth. Those eyes were too intelligent for her liking. Too ancient. It was a harsh reminder that, dragon soul or no, she was yet mortal, and could not _understand_ him.

The next few moments were a blur to her: a blur of snapping jaws and lashing tails, of his screams of rage and pain and her battle-cries and gasps. When the red cleared from her vision at last, she was laying prone on the snow, sword in hand, staring at the dragon's skeleton. Zinaazdrem, he was called, and he settled into her mind much easier than Mirmulnir did. She made to get up, but her back seized, fire racing up it,and she had to drop her head back into the snow to ease the pain. Panting, she shifted her hand inch by inch to dig into the side pocket of her bag and draw out a healing potion. She knocked it back and felt better immediately. Her arms and legs, where Zinaazdrem's fire had caught her, still felt stiff and looked shiny red. Strange — last time, with Mirmulnir, her wounds had been healed when she absorbed the soul. So she couldn't rely on instant full health post-battle anymore? _Fine. I'm still asking Arngeir why the hell it only worked once. Still, I'll have to go home now_. How long had it been? A week? Two, perhaps. At least she still thought of Hragyeva as _home_.

There was chanting coming from her left. Familiar chanting, so she braced herself and stumbled over to the word wall, where her vision swam and her head pounded; she came out standing and unharmed. _Fo_ echoed in her head this time. She didn't even have to reach out to Zinaazdrem for his knowledge — he wrapped his mind around hers and, in a process that felt like a blanket settling over her, shared what he knew of the Word. _Disarm. Could be useful._

With a sigh, she picked over the skeleton, finding little but a small chipped emerald and a couple of heavy bones which she would have liked to take home but couldn't. She pocketed the emerald, re-affixed her bow to her back and poked around, trying to find her arrows, before giving up and turning to walk down the mountain path. Time to go home. Time to return to her destiny, since the dragons weren't going away. No matter how much she would like them to.

~o~o~o~

It was the 26th of Hearthfire by the time Zahra, Côme by her side, came to the swamp-city. And was Morthal dreary! The reek of the marshes seeped into everything — even through Zahra's cloak, until she began to think she would never get rid of the rotting-plants-and-probably-worse-things smell. She hadn't been this far into Hjaalmarch before, as the few contracts she'd gotten hadn't been for the sparsely populated Hold. Well, until this glorified dungeon-diving run. She was determined to think of it as that: perhaps it would help her from going insane from the stress of what it meant in the long run.

Zahra began to regret bringing Côme with her instead of János (no matter how much the Breton needed a good adventure to stop the _moping_ ) the instant they walked into town and overheard several locals arguing with the Jarl's steward about _wizards_ of all things. It was the middle of the day — _shouldn't they be working?_

Côme shuddered and pulled his hood higher beside her. He kept his eyes down, refusing to meet her sympathetic gaze. "Come on. Let's find the inn. They'd better have an inn, at least," she said, steering him past the protesters. Luckily, none of them turned around as they went by. The inn was easy enough to find; Morthal was dreadfully tiny and the sign easy to recognize, even if she couldn't tell what had been on it once. There was another building across the way that had a sign as well, but that one was significantly better kept and clearly read "Thaumaturgist's Hut," so probably not what they needed.

They stepped onto a boardwalk and climbed a few stairs up to the inn. The door creaked as it opened. A faint "oh!" came from inside, and Zahra turned her head to see the surprised face of a Redguard woman standing by the bar. That face broke into a wide smile then, and the woman darted forward to grasp Zahra's hand and draw her further inside. "Welcome to the Moorside Inn! You need anythin' at all, just say the word. Been too long since anyone's been through town."

A pause as her fellow Redguard looked eagerly back and forth between them.

Zahra struggled to smooth her face over. The innkeeper looked so much like Aludra the last time Zahra had seen her, it hurt. At first she felt like the memories she had stuffed deep inside her after her disowning were being ripped out of their hiding place and bringing her heart with them; then the woman spoke, and she realized with a stab of self-hatred that this woman was nothing like her sister. She was too young to be Aludra, the accent was all wrong, and besides it wasn't like _she_ was unrecognizable from when they had last seen each other. She had never met another of her race with red hair, after all. So she said nothing.

"Er…" Côme began, scratching his cheek. "Really? You don't get _anybody_?"

"Just Lurbuk, but he's pretty much a local by now, even if most people hate him. I'd, ah, not recommend hangin' around in the evenings. That kind of singin' gets to people." Her voice had dropped to a whisper. "Name's Jonna, by the way," she said at a normal volume.

"Uh… thanks for the advice, I guess," Zahra said, glancing back at Côme who just looked confused. "Got any nearby bounties, by the way? We'll be setting out in the morning and it'd be nice to have something to do until then."

"Well, not any bounties at the moment. The Jarl is busy, tryin' to fix matters close to home." She paused, thinking over something. "Say… did you see that ruined house behind the inn? It was Hroggar's, but it burnt down in the night not two weeks ago. His wife and daughter died — the screaming, by the gods, it woke half the town! Most folk won't so much as look at it now, think it's cursed. Which is even worse for my business."

"What caused the fire? It's rather wet here, isn't it?" Zahra had an inkling where this was going.

Jonna laughed bitterly. "Yes, that it is. Hroggar'll only say that it was a hearth fire, but some people are starting to suspect that he did it himself. With Ymma and little Helgi inside! Can you imagine? The thing is, he hooked up with Alva the very next day. That's what's so strange about the whole thing. Man should be in mourning, but he's moved in with her and everything." She seemed about to say something more, but just drew in a sharp breath, and shook her head, returning to the counter. As she went she said over her shoulder, "The Jarl will probably pay you to look into it."

Zahra turned back to look at Côme (so she could raise a questioning eyebrow), only to find who had spooked Jonna.

A pretty black-haired Nord woman with unsettling dark eyes stood by the door, having just come in from outside. Her arms were crossed under her breasts; she was clad in the single most revealing dress Zahra had seen outside of a Bravil brothel. She stared at Zahra, jaw thrust out in challenge and lips curled into a frown. Pretty, beautiful even, but there was something wrong with her. And it wasn't just her attitude, either.

Then she spoke and Zahra's blood near-boiled. "Hello, cutie," she purred to Côme. "What're you doing with a dried up girl like this?" And she jerked her chin at Zahra.

Côme, to his credit, cycled through shock, disgust and, briefly, anger _before_ settling on politeness. "I'm sorry, ma'am. I'm not interested." He scratched at his cheek, flashing Mara's sacred ring where it curled around his finger.

"Ah, darling, you'll come around. They always do. Just ask for Alva, sweetheart." With that she shoved past Zahra and went to sit at one of the tables on the other side of the long room, calling for Jonna.

Zahra pulled Côme out of the inn, dragging him a few paces up the boardwalk towards the burned-down house. She let him go and paced restlessly across the planks several times before rounding on him. "Great, now the whole town will think we're married," was all she could think to say when she opened her mouth. _That's not really the problem, though, is it…_

Côme smiled gently. "Sorry. It was the easiest thing to get her to back off at the time."

 _Gods, like I can stay angry at someone like him. Definitely not my type though._ "Yes, well, she'll probably just think you're _more_ interesting now. I can't believe that bitch called me dried up. Like I was a piece of stale bread or something. Bitch!" She threw her hands in the air. She paused that way for a moment, before making her mind up and planting them on her hips. "You know what, I think I _will_ investigate the fire. And if I can get back at that… that… _thing_ while I'm at it, all the better."

Côme coughed and blushed pink at her language, but nodded in agreement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting close to the end of Book I!


	17. Interlude II - See the Light

**10th Hearthfire, Year 201 of the Fourth Era**

Tac, blood itching for adventure and glory, could not sit around while Zahra was off communing with the sky — or whatever it was she was doing. He didn't  _quite_ get it, but having studied his great-grandmother's secret histories, he knew that when one got the call from destiny one did not blow it off.

He wasn't resentful, not at all. Well, maybe a little, but it wasn't like he could help it. He was not an introspective person. Definitely not the kind to work out his own issues in a constructive manner, which made for awkward games of "Scar or Story", but hey. It was what it was. Which was why it was strange that he even realized he had to get out. He was bouncing off the walls, bouncing off of the others, making everyone miserable and not just Caïn. Côme, ever interested in the workings of the mannish or merish mind, might have said Tac was just worried about his two lovers. He didn't rightly care if that was it or not. He needed to blow off the steam that had been building in his veins since Helgen.

Mortality was a  _bitch_.

He remembered the bounty that János had picked up at the Mare in Whiterun three weeks before. He had to snoop around in the Nord's room — a place he was already more familiar with than his own assigned dwelling; some things never changed — to find it, but soon he was on his way next door to Silent Moons. Despite being so close to Hragyeva, bandits moved back in every month, or so the bounty said. Tac wondered what was so attractive about the spot. It looked far from any roads, so the bandits probably weren't robbing travelers. Perhaps there were ore deposits nearby. He probably should have asked around for information on the camp before diving in, but by the time he realized this he was already scouting out the place with his own eyes.

The fight, if it could be called that, was quick and dirty. The bandits were spaced so far apart that he could easily bypass the outlaw on the perimeter, instead sneaking up to the one on the ledge. He slit her throat with his dagger, careful not to let her fall into the fire she had been tending. He knew that the smoke, thick and black and smelling of death, would drift up to the camp proper and possibly alert the rest. Even if their compatriots on the outside were unbearably stupid.

He used the height advantage to shoot down the other two, then dragged all three bodies into the brush. Quickly and quietly, he stole up to the dome-shaped structure to the north. He heard the rest of the bandits long before he saw them. Someone was banging away at a forge; beneath that was the steady scrape-whir of a grindstone and intermittent murmurs of a conversation. He paused at the top of the stairs and tried to listen through the stone, but could discern nothing that he had not already. At least two, probably more. Not very sophisticated, if they could make so much noise with a bounty on their heads.

Drawing back, he looked up and saw smoke rising from the top of the dome.  _Aha. Death from above! …Caïn was right, I_ am _like an 'overgrown lizard'. A flying overgrown lizard. Hah…_

The four bandits in the dome were absurdly easy once Tac had shimmied up the side of the dome and pounced; he pocketed some trinkets from the huge chest and moved on, resisting the urge to whistle. He had spotted a door at the bottom of the steps earlier; this he nudged open to reveal a crude cave and the surprised faces of two bandits. This encounter, too, was easy; easy until the leader came charging around the corner with an orcish greatsword.

Tac cursed a rainbow and ran outside, where he had enough room to dance circles around the strong-but-clumsy marauders. The three of them, yelling absurd things like "I'll eat your heart!" and "Stand still so I can kill you!", took the bait quite nicely. Luckily they seemed to be melee fighters — he would have been in trouble otherwise. He wasn't strong enough to cross blades directly with any of them, but hopefully he could get one to make a mistake.

Except that they didn't.

That is not to say that they were not moronic wastes of space — they failed to realize they could flank him, for one, and their swings had no finesse — but when Tac dared to dart between them they did not hit each other as he had hoped. Nor did they keel over from exhaustion: even the big Nord in the steel armor who lead them was only breathing heavily. Tac was panting, and the sun was far enough down its arc for it to be halfway to dusk — so he pulled out his last resort.

He chugged down a stamina potion and skipped backwards out of the range of the next swing from the greatsword. Then, winding his arm back, he threw one war axe into the face of the grunt to the right. The man went down, the only sound the  _thump_  his body made on the stone. Lucky shot — he hadn't expected it to hit. Now there were two and he had a hand free—

Tac flexed his hand, still backing away, and when he felt the heat curling in his palm he brought it up and let the flames fly.

It was a simple, novice-level spell, one most everyone was born with no matter their race, background, or calling. Short range, but easy to maintain as long as one had enough magicka. He didn't use it if he could help it, as the element of surprise was his greatest ally.

The chief screamed as he boiled in his armor. Tac's magicka ran out too soon and the flames sputtered to a stop; it didn't matter, however, as the steel plates were heated enough that the Nord scrabbled at his armor, trying to remove it. The other grunt — Tac thanked whichever Divine had made her so stupid — went to help the chief, and promptly got an axe to her skull while she was distracted. Tac yanked his weapon back out — no easy feat — and turned to cut the chief down, but he was already twitching on the ground, his burns too much for him. Tac  _tsked_  at him and sauntered away to loot the cave.

~o~o~o~

While he was often called insane — mostly by Caïn, though strangers unused to his ways said it with their eyes — this was beyond his antics. This was  _batshit crazy_.

_What are you doing? Return My beacon at once!_

Tac yelped as the huge gem spoke up yet again from the confines of his pack. The voice, female and imperious, wasn't muffled at all by the junk piled on top. It felt like it was speaking directly into his mind. He shivered — he had enough trouble being thought of as a chosen of Sheogorath, but if this was really Meridia like the voice had said…

"What in Oblivion do you expect  _me_  to do?" he said loudly. A doe spooked out of the brush to his right and ran off, zigzagging away across the plains. He stared after it, brow quirking. No response from the voice. He took another step.

_Turn around, now. You do_ not _disobey a Daedric Princess._

"Fuck!" Tac yelled, throwing his hands in the air. Meridia wouldn't let him go home.

_Language._

"I'm a worshiper of Dibella, what do you expect?" he grumbled as he turned around, pointing his feet west. He'd have to find a courier — if the voice led him through any towns, that was. Hopefully the chosen destination wasn't halfway across Tamriel.

_Oh ho_ , was the last thing the voice said for a long time.

~o~o~o~

Following the voice in his head, he traveled west, then north towards Solitude. He caught a courier in Dragon Bridge and sent him off with a short letter to Hragyeva. Ten days after his nightmare began — bad time, but Meridia didn't seem to care if he tarried as long as he was pointed the right way — he took the fork from the road to Solitude and laid eyes on the Statue to Meridia.

It was, admittedly, a magnificent thing, greater even than the statues of his own Goddess in the Anvil Chapel. He was told there used to be greater depictions of Dibella before the Chapel was destroyed in the first year of the Fourth Era, before his great-grandmother had it rebuilt. Oh, he knew about that, too. For the Dominion's best efforts to wipe out the name Ophelia Tacitus, they had missed her descendants.  _Well, one of them_ , Tac thought with a twinge of memory. He spat on that twinge and shoved it back into the corner where it belonged.

_You might want to note that wall over there._

Why would he care about a wall —  _oh. Right. Zahra and her magic dragon-slaying powers_. He had seen a couple of the scaly beasts on the way, from afar, and they hadn't bothered him. There had been, however, talk of a nuisance dragon in Rorikstead — a dragon the guards had managed to slay, before the body disappeared in the night and a very-much-alive lizard reappeared to burn down a farmhouse and carry off the innkeeper. Then it had flown off to the west, presumably bored with the hamlet. The dead man's son Erik had taken over the business, and Tac had chatted with the poor boy but ultimately been unable to help him. Rorikstead needed an inn, and there was no one else to run it, no matter how much Erik wanted to be a mercenary. Privately, Tac was glad he wasn't — he wouldn't survive a day in the life.

He did hope the dragon was gone for good. Maybe it could menace Markarth.  _Yes…_  and then he could go on that Dibellan pilgramage he'd wanted and be a dragonslayer himself.  _Have to make sure Princess is around to keep it dead, though…_ He sighed happily.

_Well? Return the Beacon! Meridia commands you!_

Tac started up the steps, grumbling. He stopped in front of the statue, peering up at the face of his tormentor and wondering if he could get away with charcoaling a mustache on it. Ultimately sense won out and he took off his pack, rifling through the junk stuffed in there — why did he have so much silverware? — to dig out the giant, glowing, multifaceted gem called the Beacon. It tugged him, subtly, towards the pedestal at the base of the statue. He placed it, gingerly, and stepped back, waiting for the voice or a vision or something.

What he got was worse.

The beacon glowed, brighter, brighter, then shot up to float between the upraised hands of the statue. It shone with the fury of the sun, whiting out his vision, and when he could see again, he saw another, softer light.

He was also several thousand feet in the air.

Wind ruffled his hair, but it was a gentle wind and he felt warmer than he had on the ground, so he stopped panicking shortly and chanced a look around. Skyrim stretched out before him: a miniature Solitude, only recognizable by the walls of Castle Dour and its proximity to the Sea of Ghosts, to his left (and, of course, so far below him he was dizzy), the craggy terrain and narrow valleys of the Reach to his right, crumbling Fort Snowhawk of the marsh, the rivers and streams of the plains, and the spires of Labyrinthian tucked into the mountains between, ahead. A dragon flew between him and the ancient city, turning lazy circles around a peak. Far off in the distance, he could make out the hill-city of Whiterun, and even farther, the Throat of the World loomed. Where his Princess was, learning from the old people, if she had not already returned to Hragyeva. He missed her. He could have been down there on the sweet earth of Tamriel.

He turned around, but all he could see of High Rock were bits of grassland peeking through the clouds, and the sun dipping into the infinite ocean, sending vibrant pinks, reds and purples across the waves. Above, the stars emerged, more and more winking into visibility as the sun sank lower, lower. Then it was gone. All that was left was a smudge of orange along the horizon, and it felt, to him in that moment, that the sun had never been.

_It is beautiful, is it not? My light._

Tac turned towards the voice — that same, horrible voice! — automatically. The soft light he had seen before was closer now; this he assumed was Meridia's form on Mundus. That or the whole thing was some elaborate joke on the part of another Daedra — perhaps Sanguine, though as far as he knew there was usually more sex involved, not to mention booze — or maybe Sheogorath. However, there were more likely candidates for the Madgod's attentions, like people who  _weren't_ already halfway there. If he were a Madgod he'd go after the unabashedly  _sane_.

Seeing as the most likely Daedra was Meridia herself, he thought he might as well go along. Dead things gave him the creeps as it was, add the glowy eyes of draugr and rattling walk of skeletons… Well, maybe Meridia wasn't so bad. "Your light?" he said politely, for something to say.

She went on as if he hadn't said anything. _My cleansing light, that destroys false life. You must become the wielder of My light, to wipe the corruption of Malkoran from My temple. A necromancer, raising the dead left in the wake of this war to pollute My domain with foul abominations! Hear Me and obey. Direct My splendor through the ruins of My temple, obliterate the necromage and his minions, and allow My love to reach the people of this realm once again. Do this, and I, the Lady of Infinite Energies, shall reward you greatly._

"It sounds like I don't have much choice," he pointed out before he could stop himself.

The glow that was Meridia swayed a little, like the mobile Magelights he had seen Caïn use in dark places, then floated a bit closer until it filled his vision. The Daedric Lady's voice was milder, disappointed even.  _If not you, then someone else. Another hand will touch the Beacon, another worthy mortal will accept My request and be richly rewarded for it. It will not be long — this land is full of curious adventurers looking for glory and treasures such as I can promise, and such time as it will take is nothing to Me, nothing compared to the time My sacred places have gone abandoned, disused, corrupted. So much for the constancy of mortals. Their crafts and their hearts fade into darkness. But while their lives, their pinpricks of existence, come and go, I will wait for a worthy Champion of the Light._

He felt a tug of gravity at his feet. Panic clutched his heart — was Meridia going to drop him, send him plummeting to Nirn and leave him as nothing more than a smear of blood on the stone? He hadn't even really refused her! "W-wait! I will do it!"

The tug stopped and he felt weightless for the briefest, most glorious moment before the illusion of earth reappeared beneath his feet.

_Oh, mortal?_  Meridia drawled smugly.  _I wasn't going to drop you, even if you had refused Me. I will not destroy true life, and besides sweet Dibella would not be pleased were I to splatter her faithful servant at the foot of My statue._

It took a second for him to process  _that_. "Wait, did you just call the Good Goddess 'sweet'?" he cut himself off, wanting to run far, far away from the places his mind lead him.

_Oh, mortal, if only you knew what we get up to. Go! Destroy Malkoran, cleanse My temple. The Necromage has sealed the doors, but this is My territory still, and he shall not keep Me or My own out. I will send down a light. Guide it through the temple and it will open the sanctuary where Malkoran skitters. I trust you know how to explore ancient ruins? Good. Go and spread light. Go, and may darkness flee before you._

The light came closer; he could not look away as it brightened and seared itself into his eyes. The earth-feeling dropped out from under him, and he fell, fell, fell, Meridia's final words echoing in his mind.

When he came to, it was fully dark but for Secunda shining bright white and oddly close above him.  _It's going to rain_ , was his first thought. The stone was hard beneath his back; when he turned his head he saw his pack to his right. Spots appeared in his vision when he moved. Shaking them away, feeling heavy of body and light of head, he rolled over so he could push himself up. He was at the feet of Meridia's statue, and what he had thought was the little moon was actually the Beacon, still hovering between her stone hands. A weak beam connected the Beacon and the pedestal;  _that must be the light Meridia said she would send_ , he thought. He was tired and shaky from the vertigo-inducing experience, the moon-slivers were barely visible through gathering clouds, and it seemed like a good time to rest. Hopefully, he could set up at the base of the statue and Meridia would protect him from predators and marauders. Hopefully.

~o~o~o~

Tac shot out of the Sanctum, slamming the doors shut and leaning against them as the Shades pounded on the other side. Dibella's tits, they were strong! Each strike of their arms and weapons rattled him to the core, but they couldn't break through the heavy oak. They could, however, easily break  _him_ , which was why he had high-tailed it out. The Breton necromancer was the worst, launching spears of ice at him as he tried to dodge around the Shades — five of them; he had managed to kill one early on before he realized the live one was the real threat — to get at the mage up close. Fortunately he hadn't been hit by the spears. Unfortunately, while one of the Shades  _had_ , it neither turned against its creator nor had it even been hurt all that badly.

Which left him outside the doors, trying to keep some seriously-pissed off undead and a powerful mage  _in_ so he wouldn't be ripped apart, then raised as a minion by the crazy defiler. What an end that would be.

He eased his pack off as best he could while still keeping the doors firmly closed. Time for an inventory. Never had it been said Titus Tacitus of Chorrol was good at planning and strategizing, but he highly doubted the usual method would work. First, weapons. War axes, proven inadequate by themselves. A long bow and a handful of iron arrows, could work. That had its own problems though: namely, keeping aim with the Shades crowding around him. A dagger, for some reason. Nope. He wouldn't be sneaking in  _now_.

_Unless…_  He dug around some more; he had to have potions in here somewhere. Or maybe something heavy that he could throw. Where were the ingots when you needed them? A bloody wolf pelt? What did he have that for? And the giant's toe he'd forgotten to give to Bubbles was buried in the junk as well.  _Aha!_  He laid hands on his potions satchel, heard the  _clink_  from inside, and pulled it out. He let his pack fall to the floor and shoved it out of the way with a foot, then set to looking through his potions. Some of them weren't labeled; these he set aside. By the grace of Mara (or perhaps it was Dibella, rewarding her faithful, as he wasn't exactly big on the whole familial side of love thing and thus mostly ignored the Mother in favor of the Lover) found what he was looking for: potions of Fortify Health, Fortify One-Handed, and Resist Frost. The cheaper kind, but it was the best he had.

He certainly wasn't running away. Meridia would torment him for the rest of his life, surely, no matter who he worshiped. He'd rather be an undead slave than have that voice yelling at him constantly.

The pounding had stopped at some point while he searched his pack, so he downed the potions in quick succession. Axes ready, he shoved the doors open and stepped into chaos.

~o~o~o~

A sword. He got a sword. A cool sword, aye, but a  _sword_. If he hadn't rifled through every dead thing he had come across on his way through the temple, he probably would have gone ahead and scrawled that mustache. As it was, he was at least glad that the sword was one-handed and looked enchanted. Meridia had told him to pick it up, but at least she didn't seem annoyed that he was delaying obedience by chugging down some healing potions and looking through the room. It was just Dawnbreaker on its altar, the corpses of soldiers — who seemed to be carrying a lot of gold on them — draped over everything, and the pools of black ectoplasm where the shades, including Malkoran's, had fallen. He tried not to look at the faces of the dead as he looted them; it made him feel guilty as he hadn't before when looking for treasure in the pockets of the slain, but they were dead and gold was gold. He just hoped their souls weren't trapped somewhere, but allowed to go to Aetherius or Sovngarde or wherever souls went.

Tac said a quick prayer of passage to Arkay before getting up and going over to Dawnbreaker. He was careful not to touch the light that streamed down from a hole in the ceiling directly onto the sword as he gingerly picked it up—

And the light blinded him and he was back above Tamriel with a soft glow for company.

_It is done. My thanks, mortal._

His eyes slid away from Meridia's radiance and down to look at the world below. He must have been in the temple for over seven hours: the sun was rising over Morrowind, the stars winking out for a new day. Everything was the same as the previous evening, but for the light changes… and the dragon he had seen west of Labyrinthian was gone. He shrugged it off and returned his attention to the Daedric Princess as she continued speaking.

_Malkoran is destroyed, and a new dawn lights the land. Fitting, I would say. Skyrim's dead may rest again, thanks to your dedication. I have chosen you, my Champion, to take Dawnbreaker and spread light to the dark corners of the world. Do this for me, so that I may regain my righteous influence and the unholy risen may fall._

Well, she was possibly his Goddess-in-law, so… "I will, Lady of Light." He lowered his eyes, both out of respect and because his sight was spotting again.

_Wield well. May your path ever be illuminated._

The ball of light that was Meridia bobbed and drifted upwards a bit before shooting away across Tamriel. It seemed to be going towards the sun, though he could not track it far enough to tell where Meridia ended and the rising sun began. Perhaps that was the way she had intended it, the wayward Solar Daughter turned Daedric Princess.

"So be it," he whispered. Gravity tugged, insistent, and he closed his eyes, surrendering himself to the feeling: weightless and yet so, so  _heavy_.


	18. The Kiss of Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This quest is going to be a little different from what is seen in-game. The next two are much, much longer than this one.

Côme was quite disturbed by Zahra's professed motives, and worried over the implications of going in angry as the two of them walked to Highmoon Hall. Ultimately, he had to forget it in favor of the greater picture — the end product to be a mystery solved and a murderer (hopefully) brought to justice. He knew already that crimes were difficult to solve in this land where disappearing into the wilderness was easier than losing at Daggerfall Poker (and, with the War, guards were scarce besides), but with he and Zahra poking around, maybe they would see something the locals couldn't.

The Jarl could, apparently, see something  _they_  couldn't as well. When the two of them stepped into the dimly-lit longhouse, the first thing Côme saw was Idgrod Ravencrone's shocked face, and the flutter of her hand as it flew up from the armrest of her throne to rest over her heart. Zahra's sharp eyes saw it too, as she paused just inside the door. She looked back at Côme, who shrugged. He didn't know anything about the Jarl of Hjaalmarch besides her Imperial support and what he had overheard the villagers say as they entered the town.  _They think she's lax on her governance, and tolerant of wizards besides. If her subjects think ill of her for letting a mage move in, that says more about_ them _than her._

"Right," Zahra said under her breath. She strode up to the Jarl, who had since composed her face into a crevassed, stony mask.

Côme followed behind, lowering his hood out of respect. Well, baring ones head was the custom in front of kings and nobles in High Rock, where mages and their garb were commonplace, but hopefully the same principle translated into this land of Jarls and distrust.

"Greetings, Last Dragonborn Zahra, and," Jarl Idgrod peered at him, "Côme Guillory, the Hunted Hound." She leaned back again, seemingly unaffected by both the uneasy looks her court was giving her and her guests' more extreme reactions.

Côme stared at the Ravencrone, wondering if she was like the witches of his home country, who could, at the height of their power, divine the past, present, and future of anyone they looked upon. If so, how in Oblivion did she get to be Jarl of Hjaalmarch? The Hold could be small enough that the peculiarities of Idgrod were overlooked by the other Jarls, but by the same token surely the common folk knew. Witches — at least the ones he knew of in High Rock — didn't blend in well, hence the secretive covens. It had been that way for centuries, at least. No one bothered the witches, and in turn the witches kept their activities to the wilds. A witch in public was a rare thing, much less in a position of public power. However, he doubted that the Jarl would take kindly to him calling her such, even if it were an open secret.

Zahra turned to raise an eyebrow at him, and he shook his head apologetically. The Guillory crest was a dog, but he didn't know what the "hunted" part was about. There were a few possibilities — Daggerfall wasn't known as a vortex of court intrigue for nothing — but how would this Jarl know about any of them?

"My Jarl," Zahra said at last. Her voice was cautious, probing. A deer testing the waters for slaughterfish before swimming across.

"Oh, you need not be so wary, child. I'm just a harmless old woman. Haha!" Her laugh made Côme cringe and Zahra's shoulders tense noticeably. "I could use fresh and unfamiliar eyes to look into a… local issue for me. You were already on your way over to ask about Hroggar's house fire, weren't you? Well, the answer is yes. I will hire you, strangers to my Hold, to investigate. You have my permission to look around and ask questions. Be careful! I suspect there is more to this than Morthal can handle alone." She stroked her chin with one hand and slouched further into her chair, turning to a man who must have been her steward. "Aslfur, husband, what do you think our dear Legate wants with these new troops?"

Both of them knew when they were dismissed — though for Côme it was still a shock transitioning from the heavy formality, pomp, and circumstance of Daggerfall politics to the much more casual Jarls of Skyrim — and left the Hall, exiting out to a relatively clear afternoon and brisk, stop-start gusts from the west. The Hall had been warm enough not to wear gloves, so Côme had to fish his out of a robe pocket to block the wind from his stiffening fingers. He followed Zahra across the soft earth — his mage's boots made soft squelches and left visible if shallow imprints, while the deeper tracks from the guards' fur boots were hazards he had to dodge — and to the walkway that led to the inn and, further on, the destroyed house where a woman and her child had died. A guard passed by, his head turned in Côme's direction for an unsettling amount of time but his expression concealed by his helmet. Côme nodded politely to him, and the other man made a huffing sound before moving on towards the guardhouse.

"Perhaps you should try wearing something less identifying." Zahra stopped in front of the inn, looking towards the burnt husk that was the scene of the suspected crime and speaking quietly. "They may not be what your brother wore — now those were mage robes! — but your clothes still scream 'magic user in town!' I'd rather avoid things like  _that_ ," she jerked her chin towards the guard's back, "wherever we go, hey? You can just use the same enchantments you have now on traveler's clothes, right?"

"Yes, I suppose I can." He looked down at himself, or, more specifically, at his blue robes. He wore them more for the fabric than anything — the magicka regeneration enchantment was apprentice-level and, while  _useful_ , really needed to be swapped out for a stronger version — and he had gotten used to them as a second skin.  _Oh well._

"Come on. We'll check out the house first then get to the fun part," Zahra said. He knew she was only being halfway sarcastic. She, unlike him, wasn't afraid to step on toes to get information or good prices. She didn't seem to really enjoy the delicate games speechcraft required, but it wasn't torturous or awkward for her. At least, it didn't show that way.

They reached the house just as the wind switched direction suddenly, blowing from the east right into their backs.

Therefore, he wasn't sure if the chill that ran down his spine was a result of the gust at his back, or seeing the charred ragdoll in the doorway. One arm and both legs reduced to ash, face covered in soot, it still managed to smile at him with a single line of curved stitching. Helgi's doll, her limbs just a few of many things lost in the fire.

His step faltered, but he swallowed the lump in his throat and pushed ahead. The right side of the door was still attached to half-melted hinges; the soot-blackened wood cracked in half and leaving deadly sharp spear-splinters along the grain. He followed Zahra in squeezing through the gap, careful not to brush against the sharp edges even when a gust of wind made the remains of the door creak and tremble and threaten to break off the fused hinges.

Inside, little was left. There was ash everywhere, along with bits of wood that might have been part of the roof before the fire. The easiest thing to recognize was a cast-iron pot, laying on its side and warped by the terrible heat. Beneath it, were the side had touched the floorboards, the iron had completely melted then cooled to a shapeless lump. He stepped over it, thanking the gods that this house seemed to be one of the few in Skyrim to built ground up rather than ground down. Where the floorboards had completely burned away, he just saw scorched earth beneath. No basement, then. He wouldn't have to worry about falling through an unstable floor. Not only would the fall itself hurt, the boards might catch him on the way down, cutting him open like a deer for harvest.

He shuddered at the thought.

"Say, do you feel something over here?" Zahra called over to him while he was poking around in the area of the hearth, where the stones had tumbled down haphazardly and the smell of smoke and ash made his eyes water. He turned and picked his way over to the corner closest to the Jarl's longhouse, where she was. The walls on this side were taller; the fire had probably started on the other end by the hearth. That, at least, seemed to be the truth. However, he knew the best lies were not completely fabricated.

Zahra, one hand on her hip where she could grab her sword at a moment's notice, flicked her eyes around the walls. "There's something here. Can't you feel it?" she said lowly, urgently. Her voice shook; something had rattled her.

Standing there in the bright sun, he didn't feel it at first. Even right next to Zahra, following her line of sight to scrutinize the shadowed junction of east wall, south wall and floor, he didn't see  _her_  at first.

Gradually, his feet grew numb, tingling, even though he couldn't have been standing there for more than a minute. His very bones felt cold, and the chill was spreading to the flesh.

He looked down.

His brain couldn't register what he was looking at at first. Nothing had prepared him to see little see-through legs passing through his. Nothing could have prepared him enough to look up and see a child-spirit curled in the corner where he was sure nothing had been before, staring at him with bottomless eyes, transparent and tinged blue like the rest of her. Her face was too still, but a moment later she pulled back her legs, returning feeling to his feet.

Zahra's sharp breath in told him she, too, had seen Helgi's ghost.

"Hello," the dead girl said shyly, bringing her knees up and resting her chin on them, like any child would do. Her voice wasn't what he expected — no booming, no drawn out vowels, nothing that, if he closed his eyes, would reveal a ghost was speaking. "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers in town, but… I suppose that doesn't matter any more."

"…Hello," Zahra returned, glancing at him nervously.

Côme sighed and looked back at the ghost. For once, he actually knew how to deal with something. Necromancy had been an interest in his youth — until he realized he'd have to muck about with corpses — and though he had summoned Daedra only since, he still remembered a little about the other side of raising the dead: dealing with the souls that, for whatever reason, hadn't made it to a realm of Aetherius or Oblivion and got stuck in Mundus. This little girl had gotten left behind, somehow. Perhaps of her own volition — some spirits chose to stick around with things left undone, words left unsaid, and made the journey after. Or tried to; he had heard that some spirits stayed behind but could not go to the afterlife even when their business was done.

"Helgi, was it?" he asked gently, crouching to put himself at her eye level. At the tiny nod, he said, "I'm Côme and this is Zahra. We're going to try to help you. Do you remember anything?"

She peered at him from over her knees, then laid her cheek down and looked sideways. "Not much. I was sleeping, but woke up. It was cold, so cold, and  _she_  was standing over me…"

From the emphasis Helgi put on "she," Côme guessed the girl wasn't speaking of her mother.

"Then I got tired. And I wasn't cold anymore!" Helgi looked up at them with mournful eyes despite the forced joy in her last sentence. "She's looking for me now, but she won't find me. You can find me though. After dark, come and see."

Zahra flinched and reached for the ghost — to stop her, perhaps, like she was solid — but Helgi had already faded into her corner.  _The corner where she died_ , he thought. "It's no use now. If a ghost doesn't want to be found, it won't be." He stood back up, brushing ash from his robes.

"Hopefully, if we look around come dusk she'll reveal herself to us."

"That, or I could try Clairvoyance if we get frustrated." He skirted the dangerous half-door again and started down the walkway, enjoying the breeze on his skin after the ash and death of Hroggar's former house.

Zahra smiled a little at him, but he could tell she, too, was feeling somber after their encounter with the little ghost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost done! Next two up tomorrow or over the weekend.


	19. Murder Will Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told you this one was much longer. Here comes some backstory and headcanon!

Côme held his hand aloft as he cast Clairvoyance and whispered, "show us Helgi." A faintly glowing trail led away from the destroyed house, running between it and the Moorside Inn and fading into the darkness. Zahra squinted, but she could not see anything further that might indicate a destination; they were walking in blind. Whoever this "she" was — oh, in the recesses of her mind she hoped it was Alva — she could get the jump on them in such pervasive gloom. Zahra drew her bow and kept an arrow loosely nocked, just in case.

"Helgi?" she said. Something about the darkness made her keep quiet; she knew that beasts and worse would be prowling close to settlements that night. The moons, both mere slivers in the sky, did not give off enough light to see, but when Côme asked her if she wanted a magelight she shook her head. Luna moths to a flame.

There was no answer, so she, heart beating in her ears, followed the path only she and Côme could see.

As they left the shadow of the inn, the branches of a large snowberry brushed her hair, sending a shiver lancing down her back. She shook herself free and pressed on, taking a left up a short hill overlooking the town. The trail ended there. Zahra squinted into the darkness, cocked her head and listened. The wind was rustling the trees; a wolf howled in the north, and another answered from the east. She wouldn't hear it if Alva was sneaking up on them.

Two glowing red orbs appeared less than twenty paces ahead. A human-shaped shadow formed around them as Zahra's vision adjusted. She froze, mere prey caught in the gaze of a master predator…

" _Vampire!_ " she screamed, just as Côme flung a magelight at the creature. It stuck right between those horrible eyes, knocking it —  _her_  — off balance and making her shriek as the light burned her skin, her ancient darkness. The vampire wailed, clawing at the magelight, burning her long-nailed hands and ripping out her own eyes trying to get it away from her. Falling to her knees, she pulled at her hair and tore at her face. Blood flew everywhere.

Zahra's arrow, straight into the vampire's left eye socket, ended her misery forever.

"Mara's mercy," Côme said in a strangled voice, one hand over his mouth. "That was… effective." He was a pale green.

"Indeed." She swallowed her own disgust. "Well, let's see what she was up to. Where are we? A—"

The magelight, still stuck to the vampire's mangled face, went out, leaving them in the darkness again. "Another, if you will," she said, something about the vampire nagging at her. She could have sworn Alva was taller. And hadn't she seen Alva outside in the afternoon sun?

New light appeared in Côme's palm. He flexed his fingers and the bright ball rose from his hand to float in the air. He, spell-creation drifting after, walked over to where Zahra was already standing next to the body. She turned it over with her boot. It wasn't Alva. There was enough left of the face, the curve of the jaw and the tone of the skin, to tell that this was someone else — someone else to fit into the puzzle they had. Her hair, too, was shorter and finer than Alva's.

A prickling feeling on Zahra's neck made her look up the hill, where the faintly glowing apparition that was Helgi stood among two neat rows of gravestones. As she and Côme came closer, she saw that the little ghost was looking down at an upturned coffin recently torn from the earth. A child-sized coffin.

"Thank you," said Helgi. "I can rest now. She'll never get me. They'll never get me." She faded away.

Côme looked back and forth between disturbed grave and the vampire. "What now?"

Running a hand through her hair, Zahra huffed out a long breath. "We have to report this to the city guard. The Jarl herself, if she's still awake. Anything else can wait until morning… I hope."

~o~o~o~

"Laelette! Laelette! No! She can't be—  _Laelette!_ "

Zahra sighed into the early morning air. The guards had gone to wake Thonnir, the vampire's husband, and give him the news, but it seemed the man wanted to see for himself. He had appeared at the bottom of the hill mere minutes before and was now fighting back the guards trying to keep him away from the body.

She and Côme, meanwhile, were only then getting released from suspicion. It was obvious Laelette was a vampire, but the guards had to be sure the newcomers weren't part of the plot. For some reason. Nothing made much sense in swampy backwoods Morthal, she was quickly realizing. She kept her thoughts to herself, however — no good getting on anyone's bad side.

Well, it seemed she already was. At least,  _Côme_  was.

"You! Mage! You did this? You killed my Laelette?" Thonnir growled, struggling even harder in the grip of two guards. He was a large man, a lumberjack according to the guard who had questioned the newcomers, and the helmeted men had to plant their feet deep into the soft earth to keep him from lunging straight out of their hands and attacking Côme, who stared glumly at the ground, with his bare hands. A third guard approached, standing between the frenzied widower and the mage with his sword drawn.

"Now hold on, Thonnir, let's not get rash here. By all accounts, Laelette attacked them first and they defended themselves, as is justice under the ancient laws of Skyrim," the guard said. Zahra recognized his voice; he was the one they had reported to, as the Jarl was still asleep. "Stand down and we'll take care of this. Go home to your boy."

With a final, agonized cry, Thonnir allowed the guards to drag him away.

The intervener, who seemed to be of some rank, turned to them. "All right. You two are cleared for the time being. Don't go rushing out of town, though. The Jarl still needs a final answer. Someone or something made Laelette do this. She was a gentle woman. Never believed the story that she went to join the Stormcloaks."

Côme was quiet as they walked down the hill and back to the Moorside, but Zahra knew that he was thinking hard about something and did not interrupt. Sure enough, when they entered the quiet inn, Côme beckoned her into his room. He sat down on the narrow, rickety bed with a sigh, massaging his temples in a way that reminded Zahra starkly that he truly was Caïn's twin. She had seen the other brother do the exact same thing many times. She smiled a little as she sat down in the chair, also narrow and rickety.

"They…" Côme's voice interrupted her thoughts.

"What?"

"They. Helgi said 'they' would never get her. There's someone else, someone that maybe ordered Laelette to start the fire. Remember? Helgi said it was cold when she woke up, and 'she' was standing over her. I think the fire happened after Laelette killed Helgi, and probably the mother too. To cover up evidence. But it wasn't enough."

"So why was Laelette digging up Helgi's coffin?" Zahra shifted in the chair. She could  _feel_  Côme thinking.

His mouth drew tight, and his fingers drummed on his knee. "I think… This is a theory, of course, but I think Laelette was obsessed with Helgi. I've heard who are turned while asleep feel cold when they wake up, which is how they know to go to a temple. Maybe Laelette was trying to turn Helgi but accidentally killed her." He shuddered, a whole-body quiver. "And then she dug up her body to try again."

" _Ugh_ ," Zahra breathed. "That'll give me nightmares. I can't think right now. I've been awake since — I don't know. We'll figure out how to continue after a good long sleep, yes?" She stood, bid Côme goodnight, and walked across the main hall. Jonna was just getting up and the two women waved tiredly at one another before Zahra unlocked her door and slipped inside to bed.

She lay there for a long time, trying to sleep and running many increasingly ridiculous plans she would never remember later through her head. Finally she drifted off, into dreams populated, not by vampires and cold, but by dragons and fire.

She dreamt Hragyeva was burning, the smoke billowing into a sky filled with hundreds of of the monsters, the sounds of wingbeats and wood crackling the only things in her ears no matter how hard she tried to scream. She stumbled around the yard, looking for a gate that wasn't there, tripping over the bodies. No, her team wasn't to be found, but there were others. Most were generic enemies — a Forsworn there, a necromancer or two, bandits by the dozen — but a few were special.

Her eldest sister Fadila had died when her Sanctuary in High Rock was breached, Zahra knew that, but there her body lay, charred from the waist up and violated from the waist down. Here was Hyder, her first kiss and the reason she loathed bandits, eyes still oozing fluid as if it had been yesterday her knife-slash had blinded him. Near him was another man, one she had no reason to believe was dead and in fact  _knew_  was alive as of two weeks before: her first tumble, Nazeem. In her dream-state she knew it was him, despite him being reduced to a pile of charred bones. She paused to kick the pile apart, and the dragons' laughter shook her world.

The scene changed, and her dreams quieted: vague impressions flicking across her senses.

When she woke, all she could remember of the dreams was a lingering feeling of being watched. She looked around, but her door was closed and, due to the bareness of the room, she could tell immediately there was no one else within. Sitting up, she stared at the floor, trying to recall what had unsettled her so; but, like water through a sieve, the memory slipped away the harder she tried to grasp at it.

It was no use. She rose from the bed, donned her extra set of underclothes, then strapped on her leathers. It was probably late afternoon, unless she had overslept, but she was used to strange hours. She washed her face with water that Jonna had left by her bedside, put on her amulet of Kynareth, shouldered her pack and ventured out into the main room. Lurbuk, the Orc Jonna had mentioned before, was picking at a lute, humming a two-note tune at the far side of the hall. Jonna herself was wiping down the bar. She looked up as Zahra went by, asking in her Western Hammerfell accent, "Slept well?"

Zahra stopped, again stunned by memories of her middle sister, Aludra. She remembered a little, then: something about Fadila, but she couldn't grasp it. She had dreamt of Fadila. "Yes, quite well," she responded quietly, moving on to Côme's door to better shake the  _wrong_  feeling settling in her gut. It seemed the ghosts of Wayrest would never leave. How could they?

She woke Côme and for a while they sat in the inn, saying nothing to one another. Zahra toyed with her "breakfast" until it was long gone cold, trying to tune out the Orc's clumsy playing. He'd produced a drum from somewhere and her head was starting to pound in beat with it.

"Come on, Zahra," Côme finally said, leaning in. "Something is distracting you, I can tell. You're getting that look on your face."

She blinked, wondering what he was talking about. Then she realized where her mind had been wandering. "I've… just been missing my sisters. I know I shouldn't, but Jonna looks so much like Aludra that it's getting hard to ignore. And…"

Côme waited politely while she paused, giving her enough space to decide.  _It's always far too easy to tell him things_ , she thought.

"I dreamt of Fadila. It's strange; I tried so hard after Wayrest to avoid thinking about it because it hurt, and I failed so many times. But then I succeeded more, and up until now I guess I numbed myself."

Côme regarded her, mouth set in sober thought and eyes glazing a little. She could guess what he was doing; he looked through how she was then — as an aging archer sitting in a backwater inn whose burdens transcended not only the personal, not only the professional, but, apparently, the mortal sphere entirely — at her in another time, place, and depth. She wondered what he saw. Was his memory clouded by the buildup of years? Warped by the knowledge that would come after? He had been young, too, then. A waifish apprentice mage, whose eyes seemed to take up his entire face, if she remembered correctly. She probably didn't.

Côme hummed contemplatively before he spoke, drawing her back from the mind solitaire. "I wouldn't consider it strange, really. You were exhausting yourself with your grief, and while it may not have been healthy in the long run to turn your back on it, it's not like you had much of a choice. We were, even back then, living from crisis to crisis. If looking forward and outward kept you from shutting down, well, I'm not going to say I regret it."

"Crisis to crisis indeed," she said with a snort. "Nothing compared to this — no offense intended to Maea, of course; I would do it again. But with context—"

"Yes, with the context of  _now_  it's hardly the scope of dragons burning the countryside. But with the context of then, which I would argue is the only context that ultimately matters, they were indeed crises. Limited crises, but no less crises."

Zahra drummed her fingers on the table, turning his point over in her mind and finding it logically sound.

"But as to your dream about Fadila, it's possible it's because your mind is trying to tell you not to forget your family. Any of your family. Maybe you don't know Aludra anymore, but you can certainly — should certainly — mourn who was. Your sister. Your almost-parent. It's tragic, Zahra, and you can't be strong all the time. You need to know when to be weak. The most rigid trees are the first to fall." He lapsed into silence then, looking in her direction with eyes that did not see her.

She knew he was thinking of his wife, Irén.  _Irén_. She knew what he meant. Irén was a true Nord, a true daughter of the snow, who worshiped Talos and loved her country. But there was always something off for her. She was too much. Too abrasive, too certain. Too brittle. She couldn't be weak. Zahra knew there was a story behind that, but she wasn't sure if even Côme, with his interest in psychological dealings, knew. Perhaps János.

"I miss Irén," Côme said.

"I know. We'll find her."

"Will we? I know that you have to deal with the dragons now, but I do wonder… well,  _fear_  if it will always be something. Something else to grab our attention. I don't know. The world versus my wife. I just hope that there's still a world left to save if we do find her, and that, conversely, she's still alive by the time this dragon menace is dealt with. What if they never stop coming? What if they really are immortal; and even though you're the only one who can kill them, there's only one of you and you have to be around to absorb a soul and kill the dragon. For good. It's not healthy to speculate so much, but like your feelings, it's hard to turn off."

"I'm not sure if it's the same thing," Zahra said, squeezing his hand. She knew by the way her legs were starting to go numb that she had been in one place for far too long. She needed to get up and go deal with the world, and if the world ever gave her more than a breath between external complications, then she would deal with the internal mess.

_Crisis to crisis indeed._

~o~o~o~

The two of them walked to Thonnir's house, a modest abode sandwiched between the Thaumaturgist's Hut and the bridge leading north to the lumber mill. Inquiring with Jonna beforehand meant they knew Thonnir had a son, an eight-year-old, who likely wouldn't be told the truth about his mother until he was older. So it was with even more trepidation, and also a firm resolve to not get the child involved, that Zahra knocked on Thonnir's door.

Barely had her knuckles left the door, barely had the rap-rap faded in her ears, when Thonnir yanked the door open. His eyes were bloodshot, whether from crying, insomnia or alcohol she could not immediately tell, but the reek of cheap mead on his breath said more. Thonnir exhaled, something flickering in his eyes when he saw them. "Wha' d' ya wan'?" he slurred. "Youse canna leave weh-hel enoff—" he cut himself off, blinking rapidly.

Zahra had no idea what he had said, but she tensed anyway, knowing that while mourners were unpredictable,  _drunk_  mourners were just dangerous. She never let her eyes leave Thonnir, lest he attack, but she heard Côme shuffle somewhere outside her peripheral vision, and a sound like cloth moving — after a moment she connected the sound with his sleeves.  _Ah._  "Sir," she began, "I am so very sorry to disturb you, but we are investigating Hroggar's house fire. We have reason to believe Laelette may have been involved somehow. Could you tell us about her disappearance?"

Thonnir stared at her. He seemed to be sobering even as she looked back, though his eyes remained bloodshot. When he sighed, mead-breath blew into her face, and her nose scrunched up in disgust. "It was, uh, er, a monsth ago?" he blinked again, swallowed, and when he spoke again his speech was as clear as she had ever heard. "Yeah. A month. She went to see Alva before, and didn't come back. Alva said Laelette had gone to join the Stormcloaks. I couldn't believe it. She'd never shown any interest at all in the war, much less picking a side to fight for. We're very isolated out here, and I'm pretty sure Jarl Idgrod's Imperial allegiance is only so she can get extra soldiers to fight off the wildlife. And in case of a dragon attack, but luckily we haven't had one of those yet." He reached over to knock on his own door, then continued. His eyes were still bloodshot, and he was blinking faster than Zahra thought was normal, but she was still amazed at his sudden sobering. She wondered if it was a product of Nordic upbringing. "We hear so little about the war, and anything we do is filtered through the mouth of the local Legate. But Laelette was a very private person, even to me, so I convinced myself it was possible. I didn't want to think of her, that way; fighting and dying in some senseless war, never to come home. But it was the only story I had. Eventually I accepted that she was gone. But to have turned into that… that  _abomination?_ A vampire? Laelette would never become one of her own will. Someone turned her. I'd think Alva, but…"

"But?" Zahra prodded. She did have a feeling what Thonnir's reservation was about, but she needed to hear it from him.

Thonnir's mouth tightened and he swallowed hard. "But I've seen her! Walking around in broad daylight! She doesn't avoid the sun at all. She doesn't have fangs, or at least she didn't when I talked to her after Laelette disappeared. She was eating garlic stew at the Moorside the other night, too. I know how Jonna makes it — sometimes she puts too much seasoning in. If Alva is a vampire she's damn good at hiding it."

Zahra stepped back, mind reeling. She heard Côme say a polite goodbye and dimly saw Thonnir shoot her a pitying look before he shut his door, but of course she was no longer thinking about them. If Alva wasn't a vampire, did that mean she was innocent as well? Did that mean Zahra had been running around, looking for evidence to tie to her, instead of the other way around? She really wasn't cut out for sleuthing, then. If she had been targeting an innocent woman—

"Stop! By order of the Jarl, you're wanted for questioning!" a man — a guard by the sound of it — shouted from down by Highmoon Hall. Zahra whirled around, just as a group of guards came rushing by, weapons drawn, heading for the shouting. Without second thought Zahra ran to follow them, reaching for her spare sword as she did so. With the gaggle of bodies crowded around, she knew her bow wouldn't help much anyway. Behind her, the telltale hiss-crackle of lightning magic told her Côme was both following and aware of the danger.

She reached the scene and saw, as the crowd (every guard in the town, plus the Legate and two Imperial soldiers) shifted like a living thing, the source of the disturbance.

It was Alva. She was surrounded by the law, backed up against the guardhouse and utterly weaponless but for a dagger at her hip, however she was also eerily calm. Too calm. She looked around, almost bored as the guards shouted and waved their weapons at her, but she kept her arms lax by her side, neither surrendering nor attacking. Then she saw them, her eyes locking onto Zahra's, and her lips curled into a cruel smile. When she spoke, the guards quieted, and Alva's voice carried on cold winds: "Oh, my. Seems I've been dabbling and digging where I shouldn't have. Or, is that the other way around, hmm?" She smirked, a small twitch of the lips.

Just then, a whistling noise followed by a bright flash came from above. The sky, previously slowly darkening as the sun descended and late afternoon turned to evening, turned black as the flash receded from Zahra's vision, drenching them all in sudden darkness like the sole candle in a windowless room had been snuffed out. The guards' cries filled the air as the temperature dropped from nippy to freezing. Zahra felt a hand brush her arm: Côme, checking if she was still there in the blinding false-night. The static left on his fingers from his canceled spell ran up her arm and set the fine hairs on the back of her neck on end.

She looked up. The sky was a fathomless void above, no clouds or stars to vary the stretch of ink, but as she looked around blindly, she saw what had happened to the sun. It hung, huge and blood-red, above Highmoon Hall. As she stared at it, she was reminded of a giant spider lying in wait to gobble her up. "What…" Zahra breathed. It was dimmer than the sun — she could look at it quite easily — but she felt a cold trickle of sweat down her back as she looked at it. It was wrong. Very wrong.

Her breath caught in her throat, and her eyes hurt, they were so wide. Which was why when the sun turned back on, all the searing light rushing back in at once, the world spun around her and then she was on the ground, staring up at a blue sky as black and white spots danced across her vision. Côme was leaning over her, his cold and clammy hand running clumsily over her neck. Feeling for a pulse.

"What…?" she murmured. Her eyes wouldn't close. Why wouldn't her eyes close? She brought her hands up to feel her face, but Côme caught them and held them, holding her easily even as she tried feebly to yank them out of his gentle grip. "What— Alva! That two-faced— Where is she?!" Finally, she forced her eyes closed, and the burning in her retinas eased. Tears leaked down her face.

"Zahra, calm down." Côme leaned in, not quite holding her down any more but discouraging her from moving by brushing a hand across her brow and sweeping away the bangs that had fallen into her eyes. "She's escaped, but the guards are organizing search parties. They'll find her. More importantly, are you okay? You were looking around, but— I thought you had gone blind."

Zahra swept her eyes around, taking in the early evening sky, a hawk circling lazily above, the thatched rooftops, Côme's bright blue eyes — confirming for herself that she was not, in fact, blinded.  _What a way to end up. An archer going blind from looking at the sun. And, if that had happened, I wouldn't have been able to just settle down and enjoy a cozy retirement on Stros M'Kai or wherever. No, no, have to save the world. Great._  Her head was pounding, or maybe she was just hearing her still-frenzied heart.

Côme frowned at her. "Headache? Anything? You took a fall there, too — didn't catch you in time. I think there's an alchemist in town…?"

"There is," said a nearby guard, one of two stationed outside Highmoon Hall. "Lami, at the Thaumaturgist's Hut." He jerked his head, presumably giving direction.

"Okay," Côme said, frowning, but he help Zahra up and didn't say more. She leaned on him, taking it slow and letting him lead. Her legs were stiff and her eyes still burned a bit, but the headache was the worst of it, she thought. The walk to the alchemist was a short one, and Lami efficient and — mercifully — quiet except for a few simple questions about Zahra's condition. The Nord woman froze a chop of venison with frost salts, wrapped it in a cloth, and had Zahra hold it to where her head throbbed. "You'll be fine," she pronounced after a few long minutes of watching Zahra like a hawk.

A guard poked his helmeted head around the door. "Jarl's wanting to see the outsiders, Lami," he said. Zahra didn't recognize his voice, but if she were honest all the guards were starting to blend into each other. They were nameless to her, faceless due to the helmets, and their voices were so choked with thick Nordic accents and muffled by the helmets that she couldn't tell them apart by that either. She wondered what the suicide rate was. Perhaps Côme would know.

Côme hovered at her shoulder, but Zahra managed easily enough on her own. Outside, the air was chilly and getting chillier. No children played in the streets; the few adult civilians walked quickly and glanced about nervously as they went. The guard presence was much heavier as well.

"Good, good," the Jarl murmured when the two of them were before her. The Ravencrone was still slouched on her throne, but it was the kind of carefully constructed facade with which Zahra was quite familiar. Idgrod was  _terrified_. Zahra wondered if Côme could see it too. "Listen, you two. I need another favor. Aslfur?" The steward who stood by her elbow handed over a bound book, a plain brown volume. Idgrod held it up and said, "I had the guards search Alva's house after she fled, and they found something disturbing. Several somethings, in fact, but I found the most important to be that while Alva was not, in fact, a vampire, she was working for one. Alva names him as Movarth Piquine."

 _Oh. Oh._  Zahra had heard that name before — it belonged to an ancient vampire from the Dragonstar region of Hammerfell. He was such a local legend that, before the formation of the city-state, the remote mountain villages — otherwise unremarkable — would regularly go to war with each other over which one got to claim the title of Movarth's birthplace. (Never mind that none of them dated before the Warp in the West; Movarth Piquine was from the second century Third Era and thus would have been of the nomadic stock that roamed the region before the Warp forced them to settle down.) He had become something of a cult villain and naughty child-scarer by the time Zahra had traveled through in her twenties, something she supposed the real Movarth would be most angered by. Of course, he was also widely believed to have died (or rather, "been destroyed" as the tellers insisted on calling the event) by the time of the Oblivion Crisis — there was a particular addendum to the tale that a Gate to the Deadlands had opened within his head because Mehrunes Dagon was jealous of the vampire's evil influence and that was the only way anyone, mortal or immortal, could kill Movarth the Immeasurable — so the tellers were free to make up whatever they liked. It wasn't like anyone could escape the Deadlands.

Except that Movarth either  _had_ , or had merely been lost in the chaos of Skyrim's endemic vampire attacks. The vampire infestation was so bad following the Oblivion Crisis that the fledgling Vigil of Stendarr had not only risen to true power in Skyrim but was also exclusively dedicated to exterminating the nightwalkers for nearly a hundred years. Daedra hunting came later.

Zahra was a worshiper of the Nine, but she knew Tac had dabbled in Sanguic revelry at points in his life, and was only converted to Dibella because the Vigil had a large presence in Chorrol, as the city was dedicated to Stendarr. She knew quite well that not all Daedra were the same, as much in field of patronage as in position on the scale of good and evil. If it wasn't hurting anyone, she didn't care. Which in a way, made the Vigil worse — they hated all Daedra, even the benign Azura and the benevolent Meridia, the latter of whom was actually an active enemy of vampires, the first abomination.

"…but whether that's actually true or not I don't know and frankly don't have time to worry about. Alva lured Laelette out to a cave nearby, where this 'Movarth' turned her. It seems he has a plan to take over Morthal. Vampires always need more. Greedy things, aren't they?" She cracked a smile, then turned serious again. "Go. I've assembled as many guards as I can spare, and some able-bodied men and women from town have volunteered. But you, Hunted Hound, you killed Laelette, didn't you? The guards told me her face was burned."

"Y-yes. A simple magelight."

Idgrod nodded. "Very well. I can only hope that it works on other vampires as well. Divines walk with you."

"Kynareth's winds in your sails," Zahra replied automatically, mind elsewhere. Wasn't this what she _did?_ Take on bounties and kill things for money? Why, then, had a stone settled in her gut, one that stole her breath and made her palms sweat?


	20. Dead in the Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: More violence than usual for this fic. Also torture. Not overly explicit, but the imagination can be a terrible thing. Clinically-worded bodily function squick.
> 
> Here we go!

In the end, it was only three guards who could be spared, and the four townsfolk who volunteered were worse than useless. Thonnir was one, but despite his intimidating size he couldn't wield anything bigger than a woodcutter's axe. There was also a drunken wannabe guard, the terrible bard-orc from the Moorside Inn (who Zahra distinctly heard murmuring couplets about "fright" and "creatures of the night" to himself, in that deep and rhythm-less voice of his, on the way) and, of all people, Lami in a long dress with a dagger. At least they all knew which end of their weapons to hold, but Zahra knew better than to trust them with her life.

Therefore she was relieved when, not five minutes walk from the town (she could still see the lumber mill's bulk through the darkness) they were standing at the cave-mouth and Lurbuk stopped trying to rhyme "vampire" with "fire" and "liar" and "mire" and whatever else long enough to kick off the mass exodus of naive enthusiasm from their mission.

"Uh… isn't it night now?"

Zahra knew what he meant; however, she also knew that not only was allowing civilians to charge in as glorified pigs to the slaughter not good, but there was also resurrection to worry about. As zombies, they'd be distractions for the guards, who while each more durable than a wood-cutter, a drunk, a terrible bard and an alchemist put together (to which degree was debatable — how much combat did small-town guards get?), had probably known everyone their entire lives. With the exception of Lurbuk, of course, but by then Zahra was just wondering why no one had killed him yet.

She needed to get rid of them. "It's a cave. It doesn't matter whether it's day or night out here, it's always night down there." She nearly added,  _"What, you think they live in there for the decor options?"_  but that was too rude even for her foul mood of that moment. Maybe she was still concussed. Maybe she was just sick of getting sidelined. Whether it was the Cyrodiilic economy, dragons, or vampires, something was always driving her farther away from her original goals. Hopefully nothing would draw her attention away from Movarth or whoever, because she highly doubted any other adventurers would be visiting Morthal soon.  _Then_  she and Côme could get back to dragons. She was beginning to hate the Greybeards.

"So we can't use the sun to our advantage? They're going to be lurking in the dark and stronger for it?" Lami piped up, voice quivering.

"Yes. You know, if you're not prepared for this I'd really rather you not come. You'll just get killed and I'd rather not have that marring my mortal soul, or be responsible to the Jarl," Zahra said. She tried to keep her voice neutral at least, preferably practical, but couldn't tell how it came out. Côme's face was, for once, unreadable.

"Er, really? You'll be okay without us?" the drunken wannabe ventured.

Zahra nodded, afraid of what she would say if she opened her mouth.  _We'd be better off if you just wandered into the swamp, actually…_

The lumberjack looked at the wannabe. The wannabe looked at the alchemist. The alchemist looked at the bard.

The bard stared at the ground, mumbling more couplets that made little sense — if Zahra was generous.

The alchemist looked away, to the lumberjack. The three civilians who remained on Nirn stared at each other, then, nearly at the same time, turned to Zahra. "We'll, uh. We'll stay here as backup," said the drunk. His cheeks were flushed in the torchlight. Probably the alcohol, and not any embarrassment. People like him didn't get embarrassed, in her experience.

The guards, too, looked at each other, and then at Zahra, who was now wondering how she'd been elected leader of this mad venture. Any problems or deaths would inevitably be on her head. She really hoped she didn't have a bounty after this. "Very well," she huffed out, and the relief on the guards' faces made her feel a little better. "Let's go. You four stay guard, and run for help if you get an inkling it's turned south, right?"

"Yes, ma'am," the drunk said as the alchemist, lumberjack, and terrible bard nodded along.

"Right. Time to go hunting. Any of you know fire spells? No? Fire enchanted weapons? Fine then. Côme, stick close. Be ready for magelights and fireballs at any moment." With that, she turned and plunged into the cave, the still-nameless guards filing in after her and Côme.

The cave wound into the earth, narrow and steep. What little light there was outside was quickly swallowed by the gloom, and the five of them were plunged into absolute darkness. Zahra had the very last guard in their procession and the one right behind her light torches to stave off the gloom. She advised the guards to first throw them at any vampire they saw, to give them time to draw their weapons. Côme led and kept a magelight charged in one hand, ready to be flung; the other hand felt along the cave wall as they went deeper. Soon a smell of rot and damp, worse even than the swamp outside, assaulted their noses. Zahra glanced behind and saw a guard shake his head furiously, trying to get rid of the odor trapped within his helmet. For her part, she tried desperately to ignore it.

Even when the tunnel widened slightly, they remained in single file. No one said a word; the only sounds were their breathing, the crunch of heavy guard boots, and the hum of Côme's readied spell, all of which sounded unnaturally loud. Until she heard something else up ahead: the scritch-scritch of frostbite spiders scuttling. She stopped immediately, tightening her grip on her sword and alerting Côme and the guards by raising the other hand.

While the others followed at a distance, she crept ahead, her boots making no sound on the tunnel floor. She willed her eyes to adjust to the dark. Mercifully, a light appeared ahead: someone had put a torch on the wall just past a sharp turn. Once around the corner, she blinked against the sudden brightness. The scritching was louder now, assaulting her ears and conjuring memories of beasts far worse than frostbite spiders.

The path opened up into what might have been a mine shaft at some point centuries past. There was a winding ledge leading down to the bottom, where Zahra spotted four large frostbite spiders casting long shadows by the light of another torch. This torch also illuminated a second tunnel bored into the wall, one less natural-looking than the first.

She beckoned Côme and the guards forward, and they got her plan immediately: one guard drew the spiders to the center of the cavern with an arrow, then Côme formed a fireball in his hand and lobbed it into the thick of the spiders. One was killed instantly; a second, gravely wounded, died by Zahra's arrow. The other two guards charged down to mop up the rest.

Zahra kept her bow out as she descended via the ledge. The fireball's impact had been much louder than she had thought, and she kept her eyes on the south tunnel, the only path forward, as she went.

Therefore she was the only one of the group who saw the subtle blur — like looking at something through an inch of water — that betrayed the invisibility-cloaked vampire emerging from the tunnel.

It took all of a second for her to register what she was looking at.

It took all of a second —  _that_  second — for the vampire to grab one of the guards from behind and rip his throat out with long, wicked fangs.

Blood erupted from the dead man, splashing the guard that had charged down with him in the back of the head. The vampire shimmered back into visibility and flashed a grin full of gore before drawing his mace and lunging at the still-shocked guard.

Zahra didn't have time to grab an arrow; she jumped down from the ledge — seven feet or so — and charged the vampire with her bow raised, bashing him in the face before he could reach his target. The creature reeled back—

"Zahra!" Côme yelled from somewhere above her. She ducked on instinct; her friend's magelight flew over her head and struck the staggered vampire in the chest.

It wasn't easier to watch the second time.

Screeches of agony reverberated off the cavern and set Zahra's teeth grinding against each other from the sheer pain embodied in those screams. The smell of burned flesh made her gut clench and her eyes water. But she couldn't look away. He was ripping at his chest with one hand, reaching out clawed fingers to Zahra with the other.

He was begging.

"By the  _Nine_ ," swore the blood-spattered guard, holding one hand over his face. He swung his sword down and it was over.

For a moment there was blessed silence, then the guard who had been following Côme stalked past them all without a word. He paused by the dead guard, looking down at him for a few seconds, then huffed out a strangled chuckle. "Idiot. Told him not to get too far ahead."

"Edmund?"said the other guard.

Edmund let out a huff and took off his helmet, wiping his sweaty forehead with his hand. He was handsome in a Nordic way, Zahra supposed: blond and blue-eyed, but otherwise unremarkable. His lip was twitching, betraying the otherwise stony face, as he glanced around at them. "Nothing for it. We'll have to press on."

"But Vragfrid's—"

" _Don't_ , Emil." Edmund snapped, and Emil backed off. "Lets get going. The sooner we're out of here the better."

Zahra did agree, and while she knew there was more behind Edmund's irritation, she also knew it would do no good to pry. She whispered a prayer to Kynareth over the fallen guard's body — it felt strange to her, doing it underground where her Goddess' winds did not blow — and shared a bemused look with Côme. It looked like the next tunnel was even narrower than the first, so she fixed her bow to her back again and drew her sword instead. Doubtlessly, more vampires awaited.

~o~o~o~

The tunnels were fairly straightforward from room to room, and while there were injuries — Emil got backed up into a corner and tripped over a skull, bruising his tailbone and nearly getting decapitated before Edmund came to his defense and saved him — the vampires and thralls came in twos and threes. Zahra was just waiting for the swarm of bloodsuckers that probably accompanied the master vampire. Whether he was Movarth or not, vampires in packs were so tricky that she had never accepted a bounty on more than the smallest outpost, though many larger ones were offered in Cyrodiil, even for whole Clans.

Finally, they reached the main chamber. The smell of meat, both rotting and fresh, drifted through the tunnel and reached them long before they reached the bottleneck opening out into the room. It was dark within, and utterly silent. The perfect place for an ambush. She stopped just at the opening and motioned for Côme to give them some light, but before he had even gathered his magicka in his palm a voice rang out from the hall.

"Ah, light-dwellers. How quaint."

Every candle in the room flared to life at once, as at least a dozen lesser vampires and thralls lit them in unison. They were everywhere — massed on the sides of a balcony lining three sides of the room, seated at the long table lined with the parts of past victims, leering out from side rooms — but Zahra's eyes were immediately drawn to the one who had spoken.

He was — had been, at some point — Redguard, but now his skin was an ashen tan color, and his eyes red as a full Masser, as red as the sun had been earlier that day. Tall, too: even standing before his throne across the room she could tell he towered over even Emil, the tallest among their group.

"You doubt me, I know. Rest assured: you will, in fact, be a feast for the famed Movarth Piquine." He smiled, spread his arms in a welcoming gesture. "But before that, how about a free shot, hmm? I've heard you're an archer, stranger. Let's see if you can hit me. Go on. Shouldn't be terribly difficult, right?"

Zahra stared hard at him, jaw set, while the others shifted behind her. She kept her sword firmly in hand. The gathered crowd stayed unnaturally still, dozens and dozens of eyes watching her unblinkingly.

"Hmm, you're no fun." Movarth smiled again, white fangs flashing across the distance. "What about you, guards of Morthal? Heard there were more of you coming. Did one of you fall, then? Get his heart eaten by my friends?"

"No, Edmund!" shouted Emil from behind her, and then Zahra was pushed aside by the furious archer. An arrow was already sailing through the air by the time Zahra righted herself. It was dead on. It should have killed Movarth. It would have, perhaps. But there was a squelching sound, and the arrow stopped in midair, hovering about two feet over the far edge of the table.

"What the..." gasped Edmund.

Côme reached over and dragged him back, stepping a bit further into the cave as he did so. "It's an illusion! Look!"

The cloak of invisibility shimmered away, revealing what the arrow had actually hit. It was Alva. She hung suspended by the wrists from a chandelier, knees folded under her and just barely touching the table. She was completely naked and covered in dried blood. It crusted her hair, marked a myriad of trails from her wrists and hands down to her shoulders joining up with what had dripped from her face down her chin and chest. Surely she must have been dead, from the sheer number of injuries displayed on her body, but even as Zahra shrank back in disgust, she looked down from Alva's broken jaw to find that the arrow wound in her stomach was leaking fresh blood.

"Oh yes. Stupid girl couldn't be discreet." Movarth waved a hand dismissively.

"Mara's mercy," Côme said in a strangled voice. It echoed strangely in the room, and those red eyes turned to the Breton, turning cruel and darker than before.

"And the last a mage? Delightful. Let's test your aim with those magelights, child."

It was a signal. As one, the vampires and thralls surged forward.

~o~o~o~

She knew a single fire spell. It was weak and close-range, but it saved her life more than once in the chaos that followed. She and Emil ended up retreating slightly and allowing their enemies to come to them, bottlenecked in the tunnel. She didn't know where Edmund and Côme were. She barely knew where Emil was most of the time, so absorbed was she in the flood of bodies hungry for her death. She would slay one for another to take its place, trampling over the corpses to get to her. She alternated between spraying flames and swinging wildly with her sword. No time for finesse or footwork; there was barely time for her limited magicka to regenerate before her arm was tired and she had to switch.

She was exhausted and soaked in gore by the time the vampires slowed their assault. She only registered that it was over when her sword slipped from her grip and dropped with a  _thud_  onto one of the bodies, and she was not instantly killed for her mistake.

She leaned on the tunnel wall to catch her breath for a few seconds, then looked around. Emil lay dead at her feet, run through with a sword.  _How long was I alone?_ The thought unnerved her. Most of lights in the hall beyond had gone out, and she couldn't hear anything over the ringing in her ears. Though her arm ached so badly she doubted she could use it, she picked up her sword from the pile of bodies and carefully made her way out into the hall.

By the light of the two still-lit lanterns, she saw that the hall was empty. Or looked that way. Alva's restraints had somehow come loose at some point; she lay slumped, eyes open and glazed over, on the table. Zahra gave her a wide berth, wary of another trick, even though she had vacated her bowels as one does in death. Instead, Zahra crept into an adjoining chamber.

There was no evidence of where Movarth, Edmund and Côme had gone until she finished searching the lower level and started on the upper, balcony level. There she found a bookcase toppled over to reveal a hidden passage.  _Trap_ , her senses sang.

Nevertheless, there was nowhere else to go, so she went. The ringing was slowly lessening as she strained her ears. She heard running water somewhere, saw a glow up ahead, and slowed her steps by instinct. She emerged into a large natural cavern with a river running through it, and heard the hum of magic over the roar of the water. Immediately she pressed herself back into the shadows.

By the banks of the river, Movarth stood, laughing as he cast life drain on Côme, whose Ward was quickly breaking down while he fumbled for a potion. The body of Edmund lay face down in the shallows behind Movarth. His bow was by his side, snapped in half.

Côme's Ward broke and the red glow engulfed him just as he downed the potion.

"Won't help now, child," said Movarth, reaching out and grabbing Côme by the throat. The Breton's arm's flailed and he screamed, kicking his legs.

Zahra couldn't get a shot. She had an arrow ready but she couldn't get a shot without hitting Côme. Within the red glow, she couldn't see them clearly.  _Talos, help me... he's going to die._ She started to hyperventilate, trying to decide what to do. Try anyway? Distract them?

Then, the extraordinary happened. Edmund stirred and, with great effort, pushed himself to his knees. While Movarth laughed, he grabbed the end of his broken bow and bashed the vampire in the legs — once, twice. Movarth stumbled, laughter breaking off. Côme fell from Movarth's grip and slid bonelessly to the floor, and—

She had a shot!

Movarth turned towards Edmund, his spell canceled. The arrow ripped through his throat and he crumpled to the floor without a sound. It was done.

Heart in her throat, Zahra ran to Côme and knelt by him. She ran shaking hands over his face, felt warm breath against her skin though his eyes were closed. He was alive. "Edmund, thank the gods. You're both still—"

Edmund groaned.

She looked up, heart sinking. Edmund stood where he had fallen, stance relaxed, face blank and eyes...  _white_. Now she could see the subtle purple tendrils snaking around his body. The tell-tale signs of necromancy.

He was dead to begin with. Côme had raised him.

Zahra broke down then, burying her face in Côme's robes and letting herself cry. She sobbed and hyperventilated and sobbed again while a zombie stood guard over them. After a while, she heard Edmund groan again, and looked up to see him disintegrate into a pile of dust.

_Ashes to ashes_ , she thought. She wiped the tears from her face, took a steadying breath, and set about getting as much of the dust into an empty vial as she could. The man must have had a family, someone who cared about him. There would be no burial, but at least there wouldn't be a pile of dust that was once Edmund the Guard of Morthal left to be mixed up into the regular dust of the dungeon. When she had gathered as much as she could, she hefted Côme over a shoulder and began the trek back to the world of daylight.

~o~o~o~

_Three days later..._

Zahra stormed out of Ustengrav with note in hand, fully prepared to march straight to Riverwood and burn the inn to the ground for this stunt, but when she reached the surface she stopped in her tracks.

The city of Solitude rose before her, cast pastel pink in the light of the rising sun opposite. She looked peaceful, untroubled by war or dragons or thieves in the night. Zahra's shadow stretched away into the distance, long and menacing, but for the moment the Dragonborn felt very small. She was one woman still, just one, and with or without her say-so the world would go on no matter her anger (for, she realized, she really couldn't burn the town; that would make her no better than the dragons she killed), and if she wanted to go on seeing that sun rise upon the mountains and the tundra and the canyons of Skyrim, and yes, the endless deserts of her home as well, she needed the Horn. Playing along with the thief who had made the last fortnight for  _nothing_  stung at her. But saving the world — her world — had to have a catch, she knew that from the beginning.

She sighed, most of her anger dissipating into the fresh autumn wind. Côme came up behind her and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, and together they watched the ships in the harbor bob on the calm sea, and the hawks cry and circle and roost above, and a deer meander along on the moors of the new day.

**END OF BOOK I**

**Fire in the Sky will continue in Book II, _Irons in the Forge_.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've found my writing style has changed a lot since I first started writing FitS (before I knew it was even called FitS), and the first few chapters are now not up to my standards. I'm thinking about a rewrite, but it'll be a while in coming of course. For now, _Irons in the Forge_ is next up. I plan to be five or ten chapters into writing that before I start posting. Stay tuned!


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